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EDGAR  A.  POE 

A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 


Edgar  A.  Poe,  painted  in  oils  for  the  Edgar 

A.  Poe  Shrine  by  Mrs.  Norman  Burwell 

from  a  daguerreotype  once  owned  by 

Mrs.  Clemm. 

Copyright  1921  Edgar  Allan  Poe  Shrine 
All  rights  reserved. 

JOHN  W.  ROBERTSON,  M.  D. 


G;  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
NEW  YORK  LONDON 


tol  alro  ni  baJmBq  ^ol  .A 
nBfrrroM  .8iM  yd  anhriS  90^  .A 
yd  bsnwo  sono  DqY^osnsjj^Bb  B 


90°! 

I  IA 


EDGAR  A.  POE 

A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 


By 
JOHN  W.  ROBERTSON,  M.  D. 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
NEW  YORK  LONDON 

IQ23 


Copyright,  1921 

by 
John  W.  Robertson 

Copyright,  1922 

by 
John  W.  Robertson 


Add'l 


GIFT 


Made  in  the  United  States  of  America 


FOREWORD 

That  reaction  originating  in  our  cerebrum  when  either  the 
impressions  received  by  our  five  special  senses,  or  our 
more  general  conceptions,  have  to  be  transferred  to  our 
brain  cells  and  transformed  into  responsive  comprehension 
and  action,  or  that  still  less  understood  capacity  for 
memory  and  the  "secretion  of  thought"  which  necessarily 
occurs  when  our  brain  cells  function,  cannot  be  explained 
by  any  definitely  established  scientific  theory.  Even  less 
can  the  brain's  unconscious  cerebration  that  underlies  the 
dream  state,  or  even  normal  auto-hypnotization,  be  more 
than  surmised. 

We  remain  ignorant  of  the  brain's  physiology,  and  each 
theorist  who  attempts  to  psychologize  the  process  by 
which  he  thinks  only  gropes  into  the  recesses  of  his  own 
brain  and  can  find  no  law  so  comprehensive  that  it  will 
answer  as  a  general  solution  of  this  unsolved  problem. 

Although  the  law  of  conception  and  function  may  be  the 
same  for  all  normal  brains,  it  is  not  possible  to  predict  the 
reaction  of  each  individual  brain  under  the  same  stress, 
especially  when  that  brain  either  by  reason  of  inheritance 
or  because  of  acquired  irritability  becomes  abnormally 
sensitive.  Every  brain,  with  its  resulting  personality,  is  a 
law  to  itself,  and  the  judgment  that  may  be  passed  on  one, 
cannot  be  held  true  of  another  with  brain  cells  differently 
arranged.  Were  it  possible  to  X-ray  the  arrangement  of 
these  cells,  they  would  differ  as  markedly  as  do  the  in 
dividual  finger  prints. 

Given  the  psychological  training  that  will  interpret 
fundamental  facts,  one  need  not  be  unduly  credulous  of, 
or  trammelled  by  the  speculative  and  by  no  means  authori 
tative  treatises  on  the  "newer  psychology." 


243 


FOREWORD 

The  study  of  psychology  does  not  consist  in  reading 
scientific  treatises  upon  brain  function  that  contain  defi 
nitely  established'laws.  Rather  it  is  empirical  and  is  based 
upon  the  study  of  the  many  individuals  with  whom  we 
daily  are  brought  in  contact.  Applied  psychology  cannot 
be  taught  except  through  the  medium  of  our  own  experi 
ences  and  intuitions — that  sixth  sense  which  is  given  to 
some  of  us  in  far  greater  proportion  than  it  is  to  others. 

It  is  given  only  to  a  few  to  study  abnormal  psychology 
where  all  moral  restraints  have  been  removed,  where  in 
hibitions  are  no  longer  in  control,  and  where  thoughts  are 
given  utterance  that  by  long  cultivation  have  been  more  or 
less  modified  or  concealed,  and  which,  in  each  individual 
case,  must  be  judged  in  accordance  with  the  mental  state 
that  produces  it.  For  such  brains,  laid  bare  by  disease, 
more  direct  laws  have  been  enunciated.  Unfortunately, 
these  individualistic  theories  are  but  a  reflex  of  the  brains 
that  formulated  them. 

Ordinarily  our  study  must  be  based  on  those  individuals 
with  whom  we  are  daily  thrown  in  contact,  and  we  must 
attempt  to  remove  the  concealing  garment  woven  of  the 
many  obsessions,  compulsions,  and  fixed  habits  of  thought 
that  they  wear,  whose  existence  rests  upon  hereditary  pre 
dispositions  and  impulses  so  strongly  ingrained  as  to  often 
be  beyond  their  self-control. 

In  addition  to  the  living,  rare  study  is  offered  by  the 
many  biographies  and  autobiographies  that  have  been 
furnished  us.  Biographies  are  of  less  value  than  the  auto 
biographies  because,  as  a  rule,  they  in  no  way  represent 
the  personality  of  the  individual  discussed,  except  as  seen 
through  the  medium  of  the  biographer's  preconceptions — 
good  or  ill  as  he  may  be  disposed  to  interpret  the  facts. 

In  studying  my  books,  it  has  always  been  a  difficult 
matter  to  separate  and  dissociate  the  personality  of  the 
man  who  wrote,  from  the  things  written;  for  this  reason 


FOREWORD 

my  collection  of  biographies  and  autobiographies  are  co 
extensive  with  the  other  books  collected.  I  do  not  believe 
that  the  statements  contained  therein  are  in  all  ways  auth 
entic,  or  that  they  are  to  be  relied  upon  as  an  index  to  the 
personal  qualities  and  individual  traits  of  the  person  they 
attempt  to  depict.  I  have  found  that  they  are  as  valuable 
for  what  they  endeavor  to  conceal  as  for  what  they  ex 
hibit,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  their  kindly  efforts  to  make 
plain  the  inner  life  end  in  failure,  when  they  attempt  to  ex 
plain  that  which  is  inexplicable.  A  biographer  must  psych 
ologize  himself  before  he  can  psychologize  his  subject. 

A  striking  illustration  of  this  is  found  in  Bishop's 
'Theodore  Roosevelt  and  his  Time."  The  gradual  change 
observable  in  the  man  whom  we  loved  for  his  virility,  his 
honesty  of  purpose,  and  especially  for  the  enemies  that  he 
made,  is  a  regrettable  instance  of  the  dominant  ego  of 
youth  slowly  transformed  into  the  megalomania  of  age. 
The  bitter  antagonism  Roosevelt  exhibited  because  of  de 
viation  from  his  councils,  his  intolerance  of  all  things  he 
had  not  originated,  and  his  exhibition  of  wrath  aroused 
because  of  a  just  award  that  fulfilled  a  moral  obligation 
crowning  his  own  greatest  achievement,  were  but  symp 
toms  of  an  egomania  that  finally  ended  in  an  obsession.  He 
mistook  the  buzzing  of  the  bee  for  the  Call  of  the  People 
demanding  his  return  to  public  office.  Although  in  Bishop's 
statement  there  is  an  evident  attempt  either  to  explain  or 
to  ignore  these  various  assumptions,  it  is  not  difficult  to 
read  between  the  lines.  He  omitted  unduly. 

Undoubtedly,  as  is  the  case  with  Washington,  and  as  it 
is  rapidly  becoming  with  Lincoln,  time  will  cause  these 
human  weaknesses  to  be  forgotten,  and  Roosevelt  may 
become  apotheosized ;  but  such  books,  dealing  with  mat 
ters  still  fresh  in  our  memories,  arouse  only  criticism. 

What  autobiography  more  depressing  could  be  found 
than  that  of  Henry  Adams,  the  arch  pessimist  of  his  pessi- 


FOREWORD 

mistic  family,  who  laid  before  an  interested  world  his 
Theories  of  Education?  That  neurasthenic,  third-person 
statement,  filled  with  morbid  introspection,  should  have 
contained  far  more  of  strenuous  life  and  personal  impres 
sions  than  Adams  did  give  out. 

Could  two  more  dissimilar  lives  have  been  related,  yet 
each,  in  their  way,  self-explanatory?  In  both  cases  it  was 
the  morbid  ego  that  dominated. 

Notwithstanding  the  veil  of  obscurity  thrown  around 
individuals  by  their  biographers,  and  their  attempts  to 
explain  unexplainable  facts  and  to  make  the  world  view 
their  subjects  as  they  themselves  have  been  hypnotized 
into  seeing  him,  in  spite  of  that  strabismus  which  afflicts 
all  autobiographers  when  they  attempt  to  see  themselves 
as  they  desire  the  world  to  view  them,  it  is  not  impossible, 
nor  is  it  really  difficult  to  judge  of  the  facts,  not  only  from 
what  is  stated  but,  almost  equally,  from  what  is  omitted. 

There  is  an  optical  illusion  frequently  experienced, 
founded  upon  the  temporary  retention  of  an  image  by  the 
retina.  If  one  travels  at  a  definite  speed  past  an  enclosed 
and  ordinarily  view-proof  fence  (a  fence  that  has  slight 
interstices  separating  the  boards),  a  perfect  view  is  giyen 
of  the  enclosed  interior.  Before  one  fleeting  image  im 
pressed  upon  the  retina  has  vanished,  another  again  has 
impressed  its  image.  A  continuous  picture  is  thus  formed, 
identical  with  that  known  as  a  moving  picture.  In  the 
account  of  any  life,  we  find  knot-holes  and  cracks,  and 
intesstitial  glimpses,  which  give  us  a  full  view  of  the  interior 
of  such  authors  as  interest  us.  In  this  way  we  may  arrive 
at  a  very  satisfactory  knowledge  of  all  that  we  should 
know  about  an  individual.  To  probe  deeper  is  not  always 
the  decent  thing,  nor  is  it  necessary  that  posterity  be 
familiarized  with  facts,  as  in  Herndon's  "Life  of  Lincoln," 
that  the  individual,  or  his  descendants,  desired  suppressed. 

Certain  of  these  writers  have  presented  such  marked 


FOREWORD 

peculiarities,  either  in  what  they  have  written  or  in  the 
facts  of  their  lives — often  in  both — as  to  have  been  chosen 
by  me  as  especially  interesting  psychological  problems, 
well  worth  the  study  of  an  alienist.  Blake  and  Swedenborg, 
Swift,  Bacon,  Rousseau,  Lamb,  Johnson,  and  many  others, 
are  proper  subjects  for  such  an  investigation.  These  and 
others  I  have  painstakingly  studied,  and  have  attempted 
critically  to  estimate  the  significance  that  their  peculiari 
ties  and  personalities  should  have  in  a  consideration  of  the 
things  that  they  have  written.  I  have  endeavored  to  un 
ravel  the  skein  of  many  threads  that  constituted  their 
real  life,  and  to  view  the  web  of  their  personality,  the  woof 
of  which  had  been  composed  of  most  heterogeneous  and  ill- 
assorted  strands,  even  when  the  warp  was  sound  and  well 
stretched,  and  the  completed  fabric  proved  a  Royal  Robe* 

If  this  composite  picture,  and  this  reconstruction,  be  a 
necessary  introduction  to  a  full  understanding  of  Poe's 
personality,  it  is  unfortunate  that  it  was  not  made  many 
years  ago.  The  elapsed  time  has  allowed  the  acid  with 
which!that  other  portrait  was  etched-in  to  "bite"  so  deeply 
that  the  impression  formed  may  have  become  indelible. 
Even  so,  I  believed  myself  justified  in  attempting  it. 

In  a  book,  "Poe:  A  Study, "recently  privately  printed, 
I  attempted  to  make  a  psychopathic  investigation  of  the 
facts  of  Poe's  life,  and  to  interpret  them  in  accordance  with 
such  medical  consideration  as  was  warranted  by  his  inher 
ited  neurosis.  In  this  "Psychopathic  Study"  of  Poe,  I  also 
included  an  analysis  of  much  that  he  wrote  that  aided  in 
explaining  certain  ill-understood  phases  of  his  life,  or  that 
was  of  bibliographical  interest. 

The  "Psychopathic  Study"  constitutes  the  body  of  this 
present  publication.  To  it  is  added  as  much  of  the  bibli 
ography  as  directly  deals  with  the  abnormal  phases  of 
Poe's  mentality ;  also  it  includes  my  further  investigations, 
and  such  corrections  and  additions  as  have  been  sug- 


FOREWORD 

gested  by  our  leading  Poe  scholars.  Among  these  may 
be  mentioned  Whitty,  Woodberry,  Campbell  and  Mabbott. 

Inasmuch  as  the  original  study  made  no  note  of  any 
Poe  work  except  that  contained  in  my  own  library,  and 
in  no  way  was  intended  as  a  complete  bibliography,  I 
have  omitted  it  from  the  present  publication,  as  well  as 
much  extraneous  matter  that  was  of  interest  only  to  my 
bibliophilic  friends. 

There  is  in  preparation,  however,  a  work  intended  as  a 
companion  volume  to  this  publication.  It  will  include  not 
only  all'the  bibliography  that  relates  to  Poe  which  was  con 
tained  in  the  original  volume,  as  well  as  new  material  found 
in  early  and  rare  magazines,  but  also  that  desideratum  long 
demanded— a  complete  Poe  bibliography. 

Many  of  these  early  publications  have  become  extremely 
scarce  and,  in  a  few  cases,  no  complete  file  can  be  found. 
Even  so,  it  is  hoped  that  some  original  and  valuable  addi 
tions  of  material  hitherto  unreported  will  be  made.  In 
this  work  Thomas  Ollive  Mabbott  will  collaborate,  and  J. 
H.  Whitty,  as  well  as  other  Poe  authorities,  will  cooperate. 

JOHN  W.  ROBERTSON 

Francisco,  California 
August  27,  7922 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

POE:    A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY i 

SECTION      I :  FOE'S  LIFE i 

SECTION    II:  POE'S  CRITICS               .           .           .           .  115 

SECTION  III:  POE'S  FRIEND 209 

A  MONOLOGUE  CONCERNING  THE  DEAD  ZIQ 

APPENDIX 243 

INDEX  317 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

EDGAR  A.  POE  -    FRONTISPIECE 

From  an  Oil  Painting  in  the  Edgar  A.  Poe  Shrine  at  Richmond. 

FACING   PAGE 

POE  AND  GRISWOLD       .  !I* 

MRS.  CLEMM.     With  Reproduction  TO  MY  MOTHER   .  .     *°9 

FACSIMILE  PAGE  OF  CHARMION  AND  EIROS  ...          129 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 


POE: 

A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

SECTION  I.    POE'S  LIFE 

~^HE  struggles,  the  disillusions,  and  the  enmities  of  life 
A  are  a  part  of  daily  experience.  Either  death  should 
bring  compensating  oblivion,  or  it  should  throw  the  mantle 
of  charity  over  our  frailties. 

Bitterly  as  Poe  suffered  while  he  lived,  and  disastrous 
as  was  the  fate  that  overwhelmed  him,  it  was  his  ill  for 
tune  to  be  even  more  harshly  judged  in  death  than  while  he 
lived  and  fought.  Alive,  he  was  feared :  dead,  a  dastardly 
advantage  was  taken,  and  his  works  were  sent  forth 
accompanied  by  a  memoir  that  has  been  well  called  an 
"immortal  infamy." 

There  was  an  audience  that  applauded  this  deed ;  for, 
while  Poe  left  behind  him  but  few  enemies,  he  left  very 
many  literary  enmities.  His  marvelously  accurate  estimates 
of  his  contemporaries — the  "Quacks  of  Helicon" — as  sum 
marized  in  the  various  papers  constituting  "The  Literati" 
and  ' 'Marginalia,"  were  the  basis  for  these  enmities,  and 
his  neurosis,  with  its  characteristic  outbreaks,  was  the 
foundation  of  much  adverse  criticism. 

Many  other  writers  have  sinned  more  grievously,  and, 
while  they  have  not  obtained  the  corroborating  verdict  of 
posterity  to  support  their  judgment,  yet  their  mistakes 
have  been  overlooked,  forgiven,  or  forgotten  for  the  sake 
of  the  immortal  works  they  left  behind  them. 

While  the  reputation  of  no  other  American  writer  stands 
so  preeminent  as  does  that  of  Poe,  yet  there  is,  mingled  with 
admiration,  mistrust  of  the  man:  a  belief  that  much  of 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

the  weirdness  and  vividness  of  his  stories  and  poems  were 
the  result  of  an  abnormal  mentality,  and  that  these 
qualities,  of  necessity,  were  the  emanations  of  a  brain 
diseased  or  drugged.  It  is  difficult  to  think  of  Poe  with 
out  the  intrusion  of  this  personal  element.  Because  of  the 
realism  of  his  stories,  and  his  tendency  to  deal  with  the 
horrible  and  grotesque,  it  has  been  unjustly  asserted  that 
such  creations  are  not  compatible  with  a  normal  brain, 
or  with  intellectual  sanity.  Poe  achieved  such  complete  suc 
cess  in  forcibly  presenting  his  concepts,  and  in  minutely 
and  realistically  detailing  the  ideas  and  sentiments  which 
characterize  his  stories,  that  it  is  difficult  to  dissociate  the 
Work  from  the  Man.  Yet,  that  we  may  fully  understand 
the  Man,  this  differentiation  is  an  absolutely  necessary 
premise  on  which  to  base  our  conclusions. 

Poe  was  human,  with  gentle  and  lovable  qualities,  and 
possessed  the  graces  and  refinements  that,  the  world  over, 
mark  the  gentleman.  He  was  not  the  unfriended  being 
who  regarded  society  as  "composed  altogether  of  villains" ; 
nor  was  it  his  habit  to  "walk  the  streets  in  madness  or 
melancholy,  with  his  lips  moving  in  'indistinct  curses, 
or  his  eyes  upturned  in  passionate  prayer";  neither  can 
it  be  justly  said  that  he  had  "no  wish  for  the  esteem 
or  for  the  love  of  his  species";  nor  that  he  only  wished 
to  "succeed  that  he  might  have  the  right  to  despise  a 
world  that  galled  his  self-conceit" ; — all  of  which  his  first 
editor  asserted. 

Poe's  life  was  a  tragedy.  Better  would  it  have  been 
had  the  good  been  recorded  and  the  details  of  his  infir 
mity  suppressed.  This  was  not  to  be. 

In  a  memoir  inserted  into  the  first  edition  of  Poe's 
collected  works  statements  made  were  so  distorted  when 
they  had  a  foundation  of  fact,  and  there  were  many  that 
were  so  false  and  without  foundation,  that  succeeding 
biographers,  attempting  to  refute  these  charges,  have  made 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY          3 

assertions  not  substantiated  by  well  established  contem 
porary  evidence. 

In  reviewing  these  controversial  details  I  shall  attempt 
no  defense  of  Poe  except  where  the  facts  have  been  mis 
represented,  or  where  I  believe  that  there  have  been  abso 
lute  misstatements.  The  very  nature  of  this  study  makes 
it  necessary  for  me  to  dwell  on  certain  unfortunate 
aspects  of  Poe's  life,  and  on  the  circumstances  that  led 
up  to  the  legends  still  clustering  around  his  name. 

Without  special  knowledge  of  the  causes  that  may 
produce  unstable  mental  states,  which  only  an  alienist  can 
possess,  no  biographer  of  Poe  has  been  able  to  grasp  in  their 
entirety  the  essential  facts  necessary  to  an  understanding 
of  the  morbid  mental  conditions  that  periodically  obsessed 
Poe  and  under  whose  spell  he  was  at  the  time  many  ques 
tionable  acts  were  committed. 

Certain  biographers  who  have  been  Poe's  most  active  de 
fenders  have  ignored  the  more  serious  charges,  or  have 
extenuated  and  denied  them  to  an  extent  not  warranted 
by  established  facts.  Only  those  who  are  experienced  in 
the  study  of  patients  thus  afflicted,  and  who  have  had  per--^ 
sonal  association  with  them,  can  fully  understand  and 
appreciate  the  nature  of  the  neurosis  from  which  Poe 
suffered,  and  the  difficulty  in  overcoming  such  obsessions. 

Heredity,  which,  more  than  environment,  dominates 
every  human  being,  was  responsible  both  for  Poe's 
brilliant  endowments,  and  for  the  one  evil  that  was  so 
woven  into  the  web  of  his  life  that  a  mere  statement  of 
the  evidence,  without  fully  weighing  it,  might  seem  to 
justify  the  strictures  of  certain  of  his  contemporaries,  but 
this  in  no  way  justifies  the  vicious  assault  upon  Poe's 
memory  made  by  his  first  editor. 

Poe  inherited  a  nervous  temperament  that  was  preg 
nant  with  good  as  well  as  evil.  This  psychoneurotic  her 
edity  may  manifest  itself  in  many  ways. 


4          POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

There  are  certain  unfortunates  born  into  the  world  who 
inherit  a  nervous  organization  so  unstable  that  the 
slightest  strain  will  break  their  nerve  resistance  and 
precipitate  them  into  some  predetermined  form  of  func 
tional  neurosis  which  no  prophylactic  measure  can  pre 
vent  ;  nor  can  we  prognose  the  exact  form  this  neurosis 
may  take.  Often  it  will  be  merely  a  neurasthenia  develop 
ing  under  some  nerve  strain  in  a  person  predisposed,  which 
would  have  no  effect  on  a  normally  constituted  individual ; 
or  it  may  show  itself  in  that  Brahmanic  form  of  nervous 
seizure  that  we  call  * 'megrim/'  more  popularly  known  as 
sick-headache.  It  is  a  fact  to  be  noted  that  megrim  is, 
metaphorically,  a  badge  of  intellectual  royalty. 

I  cannot  believe  that  a  mentally  dull  and  unintellectual 
person  could  develop  a  typical  megrim  with  its  various 
prodromata  and  its  lightning-like  onset.  I  ts  recurrent  nature 
can  be  explained  only  by  some  form  of  brain  explosion.  In 
this  respect  megrim  is  allied  with  its  co-relative,  epilepsy, 
but  it  differs  vastly  in  its  destructive  effect  both  on  the 
brain  and  on  the  intellectual  faculties.  In  certain  persons 
afflicted  by  such  an  heredity,  other  neuroses  may  develop. 
Not  only  the  genius  but  the  morally  or  intellectually  insane 
are  classed  among  those  possessing  this  nervous  diathesis. 

Another  common  type  is  that  form  from  which  Poe 
suffered  and  from  which  he  attempted  to  escape  by  the 
undue  use  of  alcohol  and,  occasionally,  opium.  In  the  par 
ticular  case  of  Poe,  and  because  alcohol  was  his  usual 
refuge,  the  term  "dipsomania"  can  be  properly  used;  for, 
in  his  seizures,  this  disease  was  typically  manifested. 
Dipsomania  necessarily  is  an  alcoholic  inheritance.  It  is 
characterized  by  periodical  seizures  in  which  the  subject, 
because  of  changed  personality,  is  temporarily  irresponsi 
ble,  and  cannot,  at  all  times,  be  held  accountable  for  his 
behavior  or  his  acts.  Those  with  such  an  inheritance  may 
indulge  in  excesses,  usually  alcoholic,  often  immoral,  and, 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY          5 

occasionally,  criminal.  When  these  seizures  pass  and 
the  patient  recovers,  there  may  be,  in  the  severer  and 
progressive  form,  complete  loss  of  memory.  During  the 
attack  there  is  usually  loss  of  self-control  and  an  abnormal 
ideation.  It  is  a  transmitted  disease  and  has  an  alcoholic 
heredity.  Not  every  alcoholic  father  begets  a  dipsomaniac 
child.  Many  children  born  of  such  parents  inherit  other  of 
the  functional  neuroses ;  yet,  when  we  find  the  dipsomaniac 
obsession,  we  are  certain  to  find  a  marked  alcoholic 
heredity,  or  that  alcohol  has  been  persisted  in  through  two 
or  more  generations. 

Should  the  parent  not  have  inherited  any  alcoholic  taint 
and  yet  drink  to  excess,  the  children  will  show  a  more  or 
less  marked  neurosis,  especially  if  begotten  when  the  par 
ent  was  in  a  condition  of  intoxication.  In  this  group  are 
to  be  included  the  defective,  the  criminal,  and  the  crank, 
as  well  as  those  possessing  an  unstable  nervous  system  that 
may  develop  insanity.  In  addition  to  these,  and  as  truly 
the  result  of  heredity,  are  the  precocious,  and  those 
having  that  excessive  development  of  certain  faculties 
that  we  call  genius.  Among  such  individuals  a  tendency 
to  alcoholic  excess  is  frequently  a  complicating  factor, 
though  often  slightly  marked  and  controllable. 

While  this  neurosis  may  be  lessened  in  this  second  gener 
ation,  and,  by  careful  mating,  may  be  eradicated,  yet  there 
is  an  inexorable  law  of  heredity  that  usually  dominates. 
Those  of  succeeding  generations  that  do  become  alcoholic 
frequently  beget  the  dipsomaniac,  or  individuals  in  other 
ways  profoundly  neurotic ;  so  that  the  family  cursed  with 
this  particular  inheritance  is  frequently  destroyed. 

Dipsomania  is  a  disease,  and  those  suffering  from  it 
should  be  given  such  medical  consideration  as  we  give  the 
insane.  Dipsomaniacs  drink  because  of  hereditary  com 
pulsion  and  rarely  are  they  convivial  drinkers.  It  is  true 
that  in  the  early  period  they  occasionally  so  indulge ;  but 


6          POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

there  is  soon  established,  because  of  this  predisposition,  an 
uncontrollable  longing,  not  necessarily  for  the  taste  of 
alcohol,  but  rather  for  the  effect,  even  though  the  taste  be 
disagreeable. 

There  is,  in  the  beginning  of  the  attack,  a  sensation  of 
nervousness  and  unrest,  frequently  accompanied  by  de 
pression.  At  times  this  depression  amounts  to  actual  men 
tal  pain,  which,  while  not  seriously  interfering  with  the 
normal  functioning  of  the  intellectual  processes,  can  pro 
foundly  influence  the  moral  faculties  and  may  result  in 
inability  to  judge  rightly  of  their  own  condition.  The 
will  power  of  such  patients  may  be  so  weak  as  to  inhibit 
them  from  carrying  out  social  acts  and  unfit  them  for 
intercourse.  Occasionally  this  goes  to  the  extent  of  ac 
tual,  if  slight,  mental  disturbance  which  most  insist 
ently  demands  some  form  of  narcotic  control,  or  per 
haps  immoral  excitement.  They  will  seek  surroundings 
that  in  their  better  moods  would  be  disgusting,  and 
for  days  or  weeks  will  disappear,  to  return  seared  by  the 
marks  of  their  dissipation,  repentant  and  protesting  a 
horror  of  alcohol,  certain  they  will  never  again  relapse. 
Many  of  the  milder  cases  show  no  serious  moral  change 
and,  except  for  these  occasional  outbreaks,  attract  but 
slight  attention  even  among  their  intimates.  Such  cases 
are  amenable  to  treatment  and  are  regarded  as  recover 
able.  Usually  time,  with  proper  restorative  measures,  will 
cure  them,  or  at  least,  if  not  fully  restored,  their  power 
of  resistance  may  be  so  increased  that  no  serious  brain 
degeneration  will  follow. 

When  the  inheritance  is  more  pronounced,  and  there  is 
marked  nervous  instability,  very  serious  moral  and  men 
tal  deterioration  occurs.  When  alcohol  has  been  consumed 
for  a  long  period  of  time  the  nerve  centers  may  become 
markedly  diseased.  Invariably  there  is  intense  congestion, 
often  accompanied  by  a  low  grade  of  inflammation  of  the 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY          7 

meninges — spider-like  coverings  composed  of  a  network  of 
arterioles  attached  to  and  penetrating  the  brain  convolu 
tions  through  which  the  cells  of  the  brain  are  supplied  with 
blood.  These  arterioles  become  thickened,  tortuous,  and 
occasionally  membranous,  adhering  both  to  the  skull 
cap  and  the  brain  tissue.  Because  of  temporary  stimula 
tion  of  the  circulation,  this  organic  change  frequently  re 
sults  in  maniacal  outbreaks,  often  of  short  duration ;  or  it 
may,  if  this  change  has  progressed  sufficiently,  determine 
and  actually  produce  a  chronic  mania. 

The  more  serious  forms  of  dipsomania  are  at  times  ac 
companied  by  temporary  loss  of  memory,  and  one  pecul 
iarity  of  this  condition  is  that  the  patient  may,  in  action 
and  appearance,  speech  and  conduct,  appear  normal ;  yet, 
on  recovery,  there  will  be  no  memory  of  what  transpired 
during  these  lapses.  Our  medico-legal  books  detail  many 
cases  of  this  kind,  and  the  law  as  to  their  irresponsibility 
is  well  established.  Occasionally  prolonged  alcoholic  de 
bauches  terminate  in  temporary  delirium  without  these 
serious  organic  changes;  but,  when  the  organic  stage  is 
reached,  such  patients  should  not  be  held  responsible. 

Alienists  recognize  certain  nervous  manifestations  that 
are  due  to  heredity  and  have  periodic  returns  as  true 
mental  diseases,  and  they  classify  them  under  the  general 
term  "Periodic  Insanity."  These  do  not  manifest  them 
selves  by  outbreaks  of  either  excitement  or  depression; 
nevertheless  they  are  not  normal  and  are  characterized  by 
a  weakened  or  perverted  mental  state. 

One  of  our  well-known  authorities  on  insanity,  Spitzka, 
thus  summarizes  these  conditions : 

Almost  any  one  of  the  known  forms  of  morbid  impulse  may 
appear  in  periodical  phases,  but  this  is  particularly  the  case  with  the 
morbid  craving  for  drink,  which  seizes  on  its  subjects  at  certain  inter 
vals  with  such  intensity  that  the  ordinarily  quiet,  orderly,  refined 
and  sensitive  patient,  losing  all  sense  of  propriety  and  shame,  gives 


8          POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

himself  up  to  unrestrained  and  ruinous  debauchery.  This  distressing 
condition  is  known  as  Dipsomania.  It  is  to  be  distinguished  from 
inebriety  and  alcoholism:  for  the  inebriate  is  not  driven  to  his  exces 
ses  so  suddenly  and  irresistibly,  nor  does  he  cease  them  as  abruptly  as 
the  dipsomaniac.  In  the  inebriate  the  motive  grows  out  of  appetite 
and  habit;  in  the  dipsomaniac  it  is  a  blind  craving  which,  if  not  stilled 
by  alcoholic  beverages,  will  seek  some  other  outlet.  Of  ten  these  patients 
develop  some  morbid  craving  for  certain  narcotics,  and  we  may  thus 
have  a  periodical  craving  for  opium  analogous  to  the  periodical  crav 
ing  for  drink,  and  as  distinct  from  the  ordinary  opium  habit  as  is 
dipsomania  from  inebriety.  As  a  consequence  of  his  blind  indulgence 
in  drink  during  his  diseased  periods,  the  dipsomaniac  may  become 
the  subject  of  acute  alcoholic  delirium  or  of  chronic  alcoholism,  though 
the  latter  is  rare;  these  conditions  are  to  be  looked  on  as  results  and 
not  as  essential  features  of  dipsomania,  which  is  to  be  defined  as  a 
form  of  periodical  insanity,  manifesting  itself  in  a  blind  craving  for 
stimulant  and  narcotic  beverages. 

In  the  more  serious  forms,  such  as  Spitzka  describes, 
there  is  often  found  brain  degeneration;  if  so,  the  prog 
nosis  is  bad  and  a  cure  cannot  be  expected.  These  periodi 
cal  attacks  occur  with  greater  and  greater  frequency, 
and,  unless  cut  off  by  some  intercurrent  disease,  organic 
changes  occur,  and"  a  brain  break  with  mental  destruction 
may  follow. 

In  the  less  severe  cases,  especially  those  not  complicated 
by  organic  brain  changes,  by  lapse  of  memory  with  autom 
atism,  or  by  other  mental  disturbance,  it  is  possible,  with 
proper  care  and  enforced  seclusion  during  these  seizures, 
to  lessen  their  severity  and  to  increase  the  intervals  be 
tween  them  until,  finally,  complete  recovery  follows. 

Spitzka  is  correct  when  he  says  that,  during  these  recur 
rent  periods  that  characterize  the  life  history  of  the  dip 
somaniac,  they  do  not  always  confine  themselves  to  alcohol. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  may  resort  to  any  form  of  nar 
cotic  ;  or  they  may  seek  other  and  more  bestial  ways  of 
gratifying  their  morbid  impulses.  At  times  they  develop 
sexual  perversions  and  hide  in  some  brothel  where  they 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY         9 

may  give  full  rein  to  their  erotic  excitement ;  or  they  retire 
to  a  gambling  den  where  they  may  exercise  their  passions 
without  hindrance ;  or  they  exhibit  other  phases  of  social 
unrestraint.  I  have  had  patients  who  would  go  from 
one  saloon  to  another  seeking  the  glitter  of  bar  attach 
ments,  delighting  in  the  roll  of  dice,  listening  to  the 
clink  of  coin  on  the  polished  mahogany,  yet  they  would 
drink  nothing  but  effervescent  waters.  They  craved  these 
particular  forms  of  excitement,  not  alcoholic  beverages. 
^  After  an  attack  the  patient  will  return  to  his  home  and 
business  haunted  by  the  bitter  memory  of  his  misdeeds, 
most  earnest  and  honest  in  his  profession  of  reform,  and 
he  cannot  be  persuaded  to  taste  alcohol  in  any  form. 
When  such  patients  assert  that  they  have  reformed 
they  are  in  earnest,  and,  at  the  time,  nothing  can  induce 
them  to  break  their  pledge.  Yet,  when  the  seizure  re 
turns  the  impulse  becomes  irresistible,  although  for  days 
they  may  fight  off  the  impending  catastrophe.  When 
the  break  occurs  they  usually  attribute  it  to  some 
trivial  cause  or  circumstance  in  no  way  responsible — 
some  family  disagreement,  business  disappointment, 
or  even  some  lesser  matter.  Nothing  is  too  trivial  to  allege 
in  their  attempt  at  explanation. 

A  study  of  Poe's  heredity  and  life  work  makes  it  plain 
that  many  of  Griswold's  allegations,  even  when  true, 
cannot  justly  be  charged  against  Poe,  but  rather  against 
his  morbid  heredity.  This  may  seem  too  fine  a  distinction, 
but  at  least  we  must  recognize  the  fact  that,  by  reason  of 
this  heredity,  Poe  was  not  always  to  be  held  responsible 
for  either  his  words  or  his  acts,  for  his  great  accomplish 
ments  or  his  lapses.  Heredity  was  as  much  responsible  for 
the  one  as  for  the  other;  his  heritage  was  pregnant  with 
both  good  and  evil. 

Precocity,  of  necessity,  foretells  early  decline.  I  view 
brilliancy  in  the  child  as  an  abnormal  heredity  that  must 


10        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

pay  the  price  of  premature  decay.  Only  occasionally  does 
it  happen  that  the  honor-child  of  our  public  schools,  or 
the  gold-medalist  from  the  university,  achieves  distinc 
tion  either  in  the  professions  or  in  public  or  business  life. 
It  is  true  that  this  test,  alone,  is  most  unfair.  Neither 
money  nor  distinction  may  be  regarded  as  the  criterion 
of  success;  yet  it  is  certain  that  the  quality  of  brain  that 
readily  commits  to  memory  without  independence  of 
thought,  is  not  the  quality  that  makes  for  the  common 
sense  and  sane  judgment  necessary  for  successful  com 
petition  in  our  highly  organized  professional  and  business 
life.  On  the  other  hand,  plodders  will  never  reach  the 
heights.  They  can  be  scaled  only  by  those  that  are 
endowed  with  genius. 

It  was  of  old  believed  that  certain  persons  were  pos 
sessed  of  a  daimon  or  genius;  and  by  these  terms  the 
Ancients  designated  what  they  believed  to  be  the  deity 
that  possessed  and  buoyed  up  those  endowed  with  the 
afflatus  divinus.  Although  we  have  adopted  this  word 
we  use  it  in  a  slightly  different  sense : 

Exalted  mental  power  distinguished  by  instinctive  aptitude,  and 
independent  of  tuition ;  phenomenal  capability,  derived  from  inspira 
tion  or  exaltation,  for  intellectual  creation  or  expression ;  that  con 
stitution  of  the  mind  or  perfection  of  faculties  which  enables  a  person 
to  excel  others  in  mental  perception,  comprehension,  discrimination 
and  expression,  especially  in  Literature,  Art,  and  Science. 

Genius,  derived  from  genere  (to  beget),  is  necessarily  in 
born.  It  develops  early  and  is  characterized  by  precocity. 
It  is  most  dangerous  for  the  man  that  possesses  and  is 
swayed  by  it;  yet  it  is  an  inheritance  for  which  the  indi 
vidual  possessing  it  is  in  no  way  responsible,  nor  can  we 
forecast  the  destined  end  to  which  it  will  lead  him.  Such 
an  inheritance  leads  oftener  to  disaster  than  to  success. 
All  great  things  are  conceived  by  the  man  of  genius,  and 
it  has  been  well  said,  'The  Crank  turns  the  World/1 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        11 

Poe  was  a  genius,  and  he  paid  the  full  price  for  his  in 
heritance. 

I  do  not  know  of  any  biography  of  Poe  that,  from  the 
psychiatrist's  point  of  view,  presents  the  facts  of  his  life 
in  a  manner  to  make  the  student  comprehend  the  basic 
evil  that  dominated  him. 

Professor  James  A.  Harrison  says : 

Poe's  case  has  never  been  scientifically  diagnosed  by  a  competent 
neurologist  who  possessed  combined  pathological  and  literary  equip 
ment  and  freedom  from  prejudice  necessary  to  render  his  case — more 
singular  than  'The  Case  of  M.  Valdemar' — intelligible  to  the  reading 
world. 

Though  I  may  not  possess  these  requisite  qualifications, 
yet  am  I  justified  in  the  attempt ;  the  questions  have  fre 
quently  been  asked  and  so  often  have  been  mistakenly 
answered  as  to  justify  a  further  essay  in  this  direction. 
Poe's  admirers  have  been  overzealous  in  his  defence, 
while  his  enemy  basely  maligned  him;  whether  or  not  I 
shall  be  able  to  deal  justly  with  the  facts  and  arrive  at 
the  truth  must  be  a  matter  of  individual  judgment. 

I  am  certain  that  the  pictures  painted  have  not  truly 
represented  the  man :  it  is  possible  that  a  spirit  so  proud 
and  a  soul  so  sensitive  may  not  be  humanly  judged  nor 
accurately  weighed  in  the  scales  of  social  justice. 

As  a  rule  biographers  deem  that  they  have  completed 
their  work  of  establishing  hereditary  predispositions,  on 
which  later  accomplishments  depend,  when  they  have 
constructed  a  genealogy  blazed  with  quarterings,  and  all 
the  more  ornamental  if  marked  with  the  bend  sinister:  or 
when  they  have  traced  ancestry  to  some  name  great 
because  of  mental  acquirements,  or  deeds  performed,  it  is 
assumed  that  they  have  thrown  a  luster  about  their  sub 
jects  that  in  some  way  glorified  them.  They  know  nothing 
of  the  Mendelian  law  of  heredity.  They  ignore  the  fact 
that  great  genius,  like  that  of  Caesar  or  Napoleon,  or  such 


12        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

mental  gifts  as  were  bestowed  upon  Newton  and  Shakes 
peare*,  are  the  results  of  what  horticulturalists  call  a  sport, 
and  occur  only  as  an  abnormality;  and  that  not  only  do 
such  geniuses  not  breed  true  to  their  kind,  but  rather  tend 
to  degeneracy  and  extinction. 

"Poor  but  honest"  is  not  a  bad  beginning  for  any 
biography.  The  fact  that  a  father  is  temperate  in  all 
things,  fearless  and  honest,  kindly  and  generous  in  his 
associations,  and  that  he  posesses  a  strong  physique,  free 
from  all  diatheses  and  hereditary  diseases,  is  a  heritage 
to  be  boasted  of,  and  to  be  prized  more  than  the  wealth 
of  a  Rockefeller. 

It  is  alleged  that  the  family  of  Poe  traces  its  lineage 
to  a  Norman  named  De  la  Poe,  who  went  to  England 
with  William  the  Conquerer.  It  is  also  said  that  certain 
of  Poe's  ancestors  lived  in  Derbyshire  and  that  among 
them  was  a  poet,  locally  famous.  Some  evidence  has  been 
brought  forward  to  show  that  his  name  is  of  German  or 
Danish  origin.  Others  trace  his  ancestry  to  the  Poles  or 
Poes  of  Tipperary.  However,  the  most  diligent  searcher 
for  the  root  of  this  genealogical  tree,  Sir  Edmund  T. 
Bewley,  M. A.,  LL. D.,  F. R. S.A.I.,  has  proved  to  my 
satisfaction  that  Poe's  great-grandfather,  who  emigrated 
to  America  when  a  boy,  sprung  from  the  ancestral  tree 
of  Donnybrook,  enriched  by  the  red-blood  that  pulsed  in 
the  veins  of  the  Poes  of  Kilkenney,  and  that  this  com 
mingling  of  inherited  traits  was  strengthened  when  this 
ancestor  married  either  the  sister,  or  the  aunt,  or  some 
other  relative  of  Admiral  McBride — genealogists  dif 
fering  as  to  the  relationship ;  yet  it  is  regarded  as  impor 
tant,  for  all  of  Poe's  biographers  dwell  on  this  connection. 

It  has  been  definitely  ascertained  that  John  Poe,  Edgar 
Poe's  great-grandfather,  was  an  Irish  immigrant  who 
came  to  America  about  1745,  and  that  he  married  a  Miss 
McBride.  He  was  a  day  laborer  and,  apparently,  paid 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        13 

small  heed  to  the  tree  from  which  he  sprang.  At  best  the 
bough  he  brought  with  him  was  but  a  shillalah;  had  it 
been  of  the  "seed  of  Elach"  it  would  have  availed  him 
little.  It  is  certain  that  this  particular  branch  had  not 
blossomed  for  many  a  year,  and  that  John  Poe  never 
boasted  of  his  lineage.  He  had  never  heard  of  the  De 
La  Poes,  nor  did  he  sign  his  name  Poe  and,  as  far  as  is 
known,  he  made  no  claim  to  noble  ancestry.  He  was  a 
man  who  won  his  way  by  the  strength  of  his  honest,  toil- 
hardened  hands;  and,  if  related  to  Admiral  McBride,  he 
did  not  presume  on  this  relationship. 

This  fighting  strain  descended  in  full  force  to  David 
Poe,  the  son  of  John  Poe,  and  aids  in  explaining  his  sudden 
rise  from  a  worker  in  wood  to  the  rank  of  "General"  in 
the  Revolutionary  army.  All  biographies  refer  to  him  as 
"General  Poe  of  Revolutionary  Fame."  This  title  was 
one  of  courtesy  only.  It  was  assumed  by  David  Poe 
because,  at  one  time,  he  had  acted  as  "Assistant  Deputy 
Quartermaster"  for  the  City  of  Baltimore.  While  he  held 
no  appointment  in  the  revolutionary  forces,  he  did  give 
aid  and  comfort  to  them,  supplying  the  troops  of  Lafayette 
with  clothing,  for  which  he  was  never  reimbursed. 

The  date  of  David  Poe's  evolution  from  a  wheelwright 
into  a  dry-goods  merchant  is  not  known,  nor  whether  he 
passed  through  the  chrysalis  stage  of  a  tailor,  as  has  been 
alleged.  The  first  that  is  definitely  known  of  his  personal 
prowess  was  when  he  swayed  and  led  a  patriotic  mob  that 
rose  in  rebellion  against  tyrannical  British  domination — in 
this  surely  indicating  his  Irish  derivation.  He  had  a  son, 
David,  the  father  of  Edgar  Poe,  and  a  daughter  Maria, 
to  whose  child  Virginia,  Poe  was  married.  In  time  David 
Poe  became  a  prominent  dry-goods  merchant,  retaining 
the  title  of  "General."  It  is  certain,  however,  that  he  was 
more  familiar  with  the  yard-stick  than  with  the  sword. 
J-fe  was  a  man  of  substance  and  high  standing,  and  we 


14        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

honor  him  because  he  was  a  good  citizen,  loyally  sup 
ported  his  government,  and  was  generous  in  its  main 
tenance. 

Attempts  to  trace  heraldic  escutcheon,  or  noble  lineage, 
will  add  nothing  to  the  laurels  bestowed  upon  him  be 
cause  of  his  unselfish  patriotism. 

Occasionally  family  pride  is  justified.  In  such  a  record 
of  tradition  and  accomplishment  as  the  Adams  family 
exhibits,  I  see  a  reason  for  genealogical  pride  in  deeds 
performed — in  spite  of  "The  Last  Fruit  Off  An  Old  Tree," 
that  pessimistic  note  that  characterizes  "The  Education 
of  Henry  Adams."  Again,  the  research  work  and  scientific 
attainments  of  the  family  of  Darwin,  which  for  generations 
have  made  it  a  name  of  note,  deserve  recognition.  In  the 
case  of  Poe  there  are  no  such  data. 

There  is  a  study  which  must  be  made  in  order  that  we 
may  account  not  only  for  the  flower  of  fruition,  but  also 
for  the  root  of  the  evil  that  afflicted  Poe.  What  we  must 
know  for  this  purpose  are  certain  details  as  to  the  mode  of 
life  and  the  alcoholic  history  of  his  immediate  ancestors, 
as  well  as  the  moral  code  by  which  they  were  governed. 
That  their  habits  were  alcoholically  temperate  is  doubt 
ful.  William  Poe,  a  cousin,  wrote  Edgar  as  follows: 

There  is  one  thing  I  am  anxious  to  caution  you  against  and  which 
has  been  a  great  foe  to  our  family — I  hope  in  your  case  it  will  not  be 
necessary,  'a  too  frequent  use  of  the  bottle.' 

Dipsomaniac  compulsion,  as  we  see  exemplified  in  the 
life-history  of  Poe,  presupposes  an  alcoholic  heredity. 
David  Poe,  the  father,  developed  an  alcoholic  syndrome 
which  probably  led  to  his  early  death.  Disowned  by  his 
father  for  his  marriage  to  an  actress,  a  Miss  Arnold,  he 
not  only  failed  to  support  her,  but  became  dependent  on 
her  charity,  as  well  as  on  that  of  others.  This  wife  and 
mother  seems  to  have  been  an  intelligent  and  capable 
actress,  though  of  no  marked  histrionic  ability.  We  honor 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        15 

her  because  she  bore  her  cross  so  bravely,  and,  in  spite  of 
the  hardships  and  the  strolling  life  she  led,  remained  a 
faithful  and  loving  wife  and  mother. 

Eugenically  it  was  an  unfortunate  marriage,  even  if  the 
world  of  letters  was  so  greatly  the  gainer.  The  three  chil 
dren,  William,  Edgar,  and  Rosalie,  each  in  some  way 
showed  specific  evidence  of  this  heredity.  William  died 
in  early  manhood.  He  probably  inherited  his  father's 
instability  of  character,  as  well  as  his  unstable  constitu 
tion,  although  I  know  of  no  direct  alcoholic  history.  That 
he  was  wayward  and  difficult  to  control,  and  had  been 
sent  to  sea  in  an  effort  to  reform  him,  is  all  that  has  been 
definitely  established.  He  is  said  to  have  possessed  a  fasci 
nating  personality  as  well  as  a  brilliant  mind.  Several  of 
his  poems  have  been  published,  and,  apparently,  they 
compared  favorably  with  Edgar's  productions  of  the  same 
period. 

The  sister,  Rosalie,  gave  stronger  evidence  of  degener 
acy.  She  was  a  moron,  strong  of  body  but  mentally  weak. 

The  early  death  of  Poe's  mother  resulted  in  his  greatest 
misfortune.  William  F.  Gill,  an  early  Poe  biographer,  thus 
describes  the  conditions  under  which  Mrs.  Poe  died : 

Mr.  Allan  and  Mr.  McKenzie,  both  wealthy  and  benevolent  Scotch 
gentlemen,  having  been  informed  that  the  Poes  were  in  great  distress, 
sought  them  out  to  afford  them  relief.  They  were  found  in  wretched 
lodgings,  lying  upon  a  straw  bed,  and  very  sick,  Mr.  Poe  with  con 
sumption,  and  his  wife  with  pneumonia.  There  was  no  food  in  the 
house.  They  had  no  money  or  fuel  and  their  clothes  had  been  pawned 
or  sold. 

Two  little  children  were  with  the  parents,  in  the  care  of  an  old 
Welsh  woman  who  had  come  over  from  England  with  Mrs.  Poe,  and 
who  was  understood  to  be  her  mother.  The  children  were  half  clad, 
half  starved,  and  very  much  emaciated.  The  youngest  was  in  a  stupor, 
caused  by  feeding  them  bread  steeped  in  gin.  The  old  woman  ac 
knowledged  that  she  was  in  the  habit  of  so  feeding  them  'to  keep 
them  quiet  and  make  them  strong.' 


16        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

Two  weeks  later,  December  11,  Mrs.  Poe  died.  The  fate 
of  the  father  is  uncertain  although  it  is  generally  believed 
that  his  death  preceded  that  of  his  wife.  It  is  said  that 
documents  which  had  belonged  to  the  Ellis-Allan  firm 
and  which,  having  been  stored  away,  were  not  accessible 
to  Poe  biographers,  rather  point  to  desertion. 

Harrison  says  thatEdgar  was  adopted  by  Mr.  John  Allan, 
who  bestowed  on  the  boy  his  own  name.  He  was  never 
legally  adopted,  but  he  was  cared  for  by  Mr.  Allan. 

Harrison  thus  describes  the  future  home  of  Poe : 

At  Richmond  it  was  (and  is)  delightful  to  live,  and  here  in  1811, 
having  been  adopted  by  Mr.  John  Allan,  Poe  took  up  his  abode. 
During  his  most  impressionable  years,  the  City  was  the  most  intellec 
tual  and  the  gayest  city  in  the  South.  It  was  full  of  old  families  that 
had  furnished  statesmen,  legislators,  governors,  generals  and  Con 
gressmen  to  the  United  States.  .  .  .  Little  Edgar's  childhood  and 
youth  were  passed  in  an  atmosphere  of  sociability,  open-air  sports, 
oratory,  and  elocution. 

Raised  as  the  son  of  a  rich  man,  and  accustomed  to  all 
the  luxuries  that  should  not  be  given  to  any  child,  it  is 
possible  that  such  surroundings  brought  out  and  accen 
tuated  those  hereditary  evils  that  a  different  environ 
ment  might  have  modified.  As  far  as  we  know,  Poe's  one 
expressed  desire  and  longing  was  for  mother-love.  The 
considerate  and  loving  care  he  lavished  on  his  wife  and 
her  mother  proves  to  us  that,  in  spite  of  his  inherited 
paternal  vices,  there  must  have  been  in  him  some  of  the 
staunch  and  lovable  qualities  of  his  mother;  and  the  love 
that  he  always  exhibited  for  Mrs.  Clemm  redeems  him 
from  the  charge  of  having  been  the  cold,  repellent,  and 
unfriended  being  delineated  by  his  first  biographer. 

Poe  early  became  the  spoiled  pet  of  an  admiring  guard 
ian.  No  more  pitiful  picture  could  be  drawn  than  this : 

A  pretty  trick  taught  the  boy  by  Mr.  Allan  was  to  drink  the 
healths  of  the  company  in  a  glass  of  diluted  wine.  He  would  stand 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        17 

on  a  chair,  raise  the  glass  with  all  the  ceremony  of  those  old  Dominion 
days,  then  take  a  sip  gracefully,  then  with  roguish  laugh,  reseat 
himself  amidst  the  applause  of  the  company. 

We  need  not  wonder  at  the  peculiar  form  and  abnormal 
character  of  his  early  drinking,  considering  his  heredity, 
and  with  such  environment.  The  gin  sop  could  not  have 
more  evilly  influenced  him. 

He  was  mentally  precocious  and  physically  well  de 
veloped.  Not  only  was  he  brilliant  in  his  classes  and  re 
markable  for  his  mental  attainments,  but  he  was  the 
leader  in  play  and  all  athletic  exercises.  No  wonder  the 
heart  of  his  doting  guardian  warmed  to  a  being  so  gifted. 
But,  with  all  these  advantages, 

Evil  things  in  robes  of  sorrow 
Assailed  the  monarch's  high  estate. 

The  hereditary  evil,  like  the  precocity,  was  also  a  part 
of  Poe's  inheritance.  While  yet  a  student  there  came 
reports  of  moral  delinquencies  and  alcoholic  excesses  which 
resulted  in  Allan  forbidding  his  return  to  the  university. 
A  classmate  writes : 

Poe's  passion  for  strong  drink  was  as  marked  as  for  cards.  It  was 
not  the  taste  of  the  beverage  that  influenced  him;  without  a  sip  or 
smack  of  the  mouth  he  would  seize  a  full  glass,  without  sugar  or 
water,  and  send  it  home  at  a  single  gulp. 

His  guardian,  no  longer  willing  to  countenance  his  esca 
pades,  forced  him  to  work,  but,  so  attached  was  Mrs.  Allan 
to  the  wayward  boy,  that  an  added  unhappiness  entered 
the  Allan  home. 

There  is  an  unwritten  chapter  in  the  life  of  Poe,  but  the 
details  have  never  been  made  public.  They  deal  with  the 
Allan  family  skeleton,  which  became  a  matter  of  court 
record.  There  was  marital  unhappiness  due  to  the  fact  that 
Allan  entered  into  entangling  alliances  that  ended  in  a 
notorious  will  contest.  During  the  life  of  the  first  Mrs. 


18        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

Allan  this  was  probably  known  to  her ;  and  it  is  said  that 
Poe,  then  a  young  boy,  was  instrumental  in  finding  out 
for  her  such  information  concerning  her  husband's  affairs 
as  she  required. 

Not  only  was  Poe  not  adopted  by  Allan,  he  was  barely 
tolerated  because  of  Mrs.  Allan's  very  pronounced  regard 
for  him.  It  is  said  that  although  Allan  knew  of  Poe's 
intention  to  run  away  from  Richmond  where,  after  his 
recall  from  the  university,  he  had  been  compelled  to 
work  in  Allan's  tobacco  warehouse,  the  man  took  no  steps 
to  prevent  the  flight,  but  rather  encouraged  it.  Certain  it  is 
that  Poe  did  run  away  and  take  ship  for  England,  and  that 
when  this  became  known  to  Mrs.  Allan  she  made  every 
effort  to  force  his  return.  Certain  papers  found  in  the 
warehouse  of  Allan,  now  known  as  the  "Ellis- Allan  Docu 
ments/'  which  recently  have  been  placed  in  the  Congres 
sional  Library,  cover  a  period  preceding  the  "adoption" 
of  Poe,  and  also  a  considerable  time  after  all  Poe  associa 
tion  had  ceased.  These  also  may  contain  letters  that  were 
taken  from  Mrs.  Poe  at  the  time  of  her  death.  As  far  as 
they  relate  to  matters  of  hereditary  significance  regarding 
Poe,  they  are  of  value,  but  not  for  the  purpose  of  further 
discrediting  the  Poe  family.  It  is  said  that  the  undue  use 
Allan  made  of  these  papers  embittered  Poe  still  more,  and 
this  goes  far  to  explain  the  active  hostility  that  existed 
between  them. 

That  Poe  spent  two  years  traveling  on  the  continent 
of  Europe,  during  which  time  he  visited  Russia,  Greece, 
and  France,  is  not  probable.  We  know  that  it  was  during 
this  time  that  the  first  "Tamerlane"  was  printed  in  Boston, 
but  the  bibliographical  details  remain  an  unsolvable  puz 
zle.  While  we  cannot  account  for  this  long  period,  and 
know  little  of  the  life  Poe  led  and  the  influences  that  sur 
rounded  him,  I  cannot  agree  with  Prof essor  George  Wood- 
berry's  claim  to  the  discovery  that  Poe  enlisted  in  the 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        19 

army  under  the  name  of  Perry  and  served  faithfully,  with 
an  excellent  record  for  sobriety  and  attention  to  his  duties, 
and  that  his  conduct  was  so  admirable  and  his  deportment 
so  good  that,  at  the  end  of  two  years,  he  was  promoted  to 
the  highest  non-commissioned  grade  in  the  service  and 
honorably  discharged. 

Poe's  later  biographers  have  accepted  this  as  an  estab 
lished  fact,  in  spite  of  existing  records  which  show  that 
the  complexion  and  the  color  of  the  eyes  and  hair  of  Perry 
differed  from  those  of  Poe.  Even  this  might  be  accounted 
for  by  careless  entries.  My  reason  for  doubting  the  discov 
ery  of  Woodberry  is  that  at  no  time  was  Poe  amenable  to 
the  slightest  restraint ;  nor  could  he,  even  for  the  shortest 
period,  brook  discipline.  I  do  not  believe  it  possible  for 
one  of  Poe's  neurotic  temperament  to  have  contained 
himself  so  completely  when  placed  under  such  strict  disci 
pline  and  in  surroundings  so  exacting.  He  enlisted,  but 
earned  no  discharge.  According  to  a  statement  of  the 
second  Mrs.  Allen  a  substitute  released  him. 

Poe  finally  was  admitted  to  West  Point,  although  he 
was  over  age  and  temperamentally  unfitted  for  the  army. 
The  Perry  record  was  used  to  prove  Poe's  personal  fitness 
for  such  a  career  and  to  demonstrate  his  soldierly  quali 
ties.  In  his  application  Poe's  friends  falsified,  representing 
his  birthplace  to  have  been  Richmond  and  the  year  of  his 
birth  1811.  He  was  born  in  Boston  in  1809,  and  entered 
West  Point  in  July,  1830,  when  he  was  twenty-one  years 
and  six  months  old. 

Poe  was  not  proud  of  his  Boston  birth,  and,  in  the 
various  statements  he  gave  out  for  biographical  notices, 
he  named  Baltimore  as  his  birthplace. 

I  do  not  know  that  any  unprejudiced  person  can  blame 
Poe  for  denying  that  he  was  born  in  Boston.  It  was  an 
accident  due  to  the  fact  that  his  birth  occurred  while  his 
mother  was  there,  with  her  theatrical  company.  His  heart 


20        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

was  in  Richmond  and,  in  feeling  and  later  association, 
he  was  fanatically  Southern. 

At  West  Point,  for  the  first  time,  we  get  a  lifelike  por 
trayal  of  Poe,  the  man.  The  picture,  while  illuminating, 
is  not  pleasing.  It  was  drawn  by  a  fellow  student,  appar 
ently  his  closest  friend. 

Poe  evidently  had  seen  much  of  life — hard  life,  which  had 
left  its  imprint.  As  a  young  boy  he  had  been  admired  for  his 
personal  beauty;  when  he  entered  West  Point  his  expres 
sion  was  "weary,  worn  and  discontented,"  and  so  aged  did 
he  appear  that  it  was  jokingly  said  the  appointment  had 
been  obtained  for  the  son,  but  he  had  died  and  his  father 
took  the  vacancy.  Cheap  wit :  but  at  least  it  showed  that 
the  life  Poe  lived  before  entering  West  Point  left  its  mark. 

Another  report  current  in  the  corps  was  that  he  was  the  grandson 
of  Benedict  Arnold.  Some  good-natured  friend  told  him  of  it,  and  Poe 
did  not  contradict  it,  but  seemed  rather  pleased  than  otherwise  at  the 
mistake. 

He  neglected  his  studies  and  expressed  the  greatest  con 
tempt  for  the  required  military  duties — very  different 
from  the  orderly  and  punctilious  Perry.  His  alcoholic 
habits  there  have  been  set  forth  in  full.  His  friend  paints 
his  life  as  most  irregular;  as  consisting  of  a  series  of 
broken  rules,  defiance  of  all  authority,  inveigling  younger 
and  less  sophisticated  youths  into  infringements  of  army 
regulations,  and,  above  all,  such  utter  disregard  for  all  the 
canons  of  decency  and  morality,  that  the  alienist  must 
believe  such  actions  were  the  result  of  an  acute  mental 
brainstorm,  induced  by  the  abuse  of  alcohol. 

Poe  apologists  have  explained  these  acts  as  a  ruse  for  es 
caping  from  an  irksome  confinement,  and  as  a  means  toward 
regaining  his  freedom.  This  is  not  an  intelligible  explan 
ation  and  does  not  comport  with  the  facts.  Other  means 
could  have  been  adopted  which  more  easily  and  more  hon 
orably  would  have  attained  this  end.  Rather,  these  acts  are 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        21 

in  line  with  the  loose  and  irresponsible  life  that  he  had  fol 
lowed  for  two  years  before  entering  the  Military  Academy. 
It  has  been  shown  that  during  that  time  Poe'slife  was  most 
irregular. 

A  story,  current  at  the  military  academy,  was  told  by 
General  Magruder : 

He  made  a  voyage  to  sea  on  some  merchant  vessel,  before  the  mast. 
Finding  himself  in  the  Mediterranean,  he  debarked  at  some  Eastern 
port  and  penetrated  into  Egypt  and  Arabia.  Returning  to  the  United 
States,  he  enlisted  as  a  private  in  the  United  States  Army  at  Fort 
ress  Monroe.  After  some  months'  service  his  whereabouts  and  position 
became  known  to  Mr.  Allan,  who,  through  the  mediation  of  General 
Scott  (a  cousin  of  the  second  Mrs.  Allan),  obtained  his  release  from 
the  army,  and  sent  him  a  cadet's  warrant  to  West  Point. 

It  seems  to  be  definitely  established  that  at  no  time  dur 
ing  these  years  did  Poe  live  an  orderly  and  regular  life.  He 
undoubtedly  traveled  much,  possibly  as  a  sailor,  for  he 
could  not  have  afforded  the  transportation  of  a  tourist, 
and  some  time  must  have  been  spent  in  the  United  States, 
outside  the  army,  as  his  Boston  connection  makes  evident. 
In  whatever  way  the  Perry  record  was  used,  it  did  not 
fully  represent  Poe's  life  during  the  whole  of  that  time. 

Could  the  facts  of  his  life  history  be  accurately  traced, 
they  would  be  of  great  psychological  value;  they  might 
show  the  growth  of  the  poisonous  vine  that  later  encircled 
and  bound  him,  and  crushed  him  in  its  vicious  embrace. 
Such  a  disease  as  that  from  which  Poe  suffered  is  most 
insidious  in  its  approach.  The  liberties  indulged  in  youth 
and  the  lack  of  restraint  laid  a  foundation  that  later  no 
will-power  could  overcome,  and  which  exacted  a  price  of 
misery,  depression  and  suffering  from  its  victim  that  passes 
human  understanding. 

The  only  thing  to  which  Poe  remained  constant  during 
these  years  of  stress  and  storm  was  his  love  of  good 
literature. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

At  about  the  time  Poe  entered  West  Point  he  began  a 
correspondence  with  Neal,  editor  of  "The  Yankee."  In 
the  issue  for  December,  1829,  and  in  answer  to  a  slur 
ring  notice  concerning  one  of  his  poems,  referred  to  in 
the  number  for  September,  Poe  thus  wrote: 

I  am  about  to  publish  a  volume  of  poems,  the  greatest  part 
written  before  I  was  fifteen.  Speaking  about  'heaven'  the  editor  of 
the  'Yankee'  said:  'He  might  write  a  beautiful  if  not  a  magnificent 
poem' — the  very  first  words  of  encouragement  I  ever  remember  to 
have  heard.  I  am  certain  that,  so  far,  I  have  not  written  either,  but 
that  I  can,  I  will  take  my  oath,  if  they  will  only  give  me  time. 

Poe  quotes  only  the  concluding  paragraph.  What  "The 
Yankee"  really  said  was: 

If  E.  A.  P.  of  Baltimore — whose  lines  about  heaven,  though  he 
seems  to  regard  them  as  altogether  superior  to  anything  in  the  whole 
range  of  American  poetry,  save  two  or  three  trifles  referred  to,  are, 
though  nonsense,  rather  exquisite  nonsense — would  but  do  himself 
justice,  might  make  a  beautiful  and  perhaps  magnificent  poem. 

After  declaring  there  was  very  much  to  justify  hope  and 
quoting  several  stanzas  that  any  Poe  lover  would  regard 
as  typically  and  Poesquely  melodic,  the  review  ends  with 
these  lines : 

The  Moonlight 

falls- 
Over  hamlets,  over  halls, 
Wherever  they  may  be, 
O'er  the  strange  woods,  o'er  tne  sea 
O'er  the  spirits  on  the  wing, 
O'er  every  drowsy  thing — 
And  buried  them  up  quite, 
In  a  labyrinth  of  light, 
And  then  how  deep !  Oh  deep  \ 
Is  the  passion  of  their  sleep! 

He  should  have  signed  it  Bah!  We  have  no  room  for  others. 

If  these  are  the  "first  words  of  encouragement,"  then 
Poe's  poetic  genius  must  have  budded  in  a  literary  frost. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        23 

The  events  of  Poe's  life  for  the  two  years  following  his 
expulsion  from  West  Point  are  as  great  a  mystery  as 
those  of  the  years  preceding  his  admittance.  Apparently 
these  two  periods  have  become  inextricably  intermixed  as 
to  details,  and  many  events  said  to  have  occurred  in  the 
first  period  are  certainly  duplicated  in  the  last.  It  seems 
that  at  one  time  Poe  did  enlist  in  the  army,  and  that  he 
could  obtain  his  discharge  only  by  inducing  Allan  to 
supply  a  substitute.  If,  as  seems  probable,  this  enlistment 
preceded  Poe's  entrance  to  West  Point,  it  would  disprove 
Woodberry's  contention  as  to  the  identity  of  Poe  and  Perry. 

The  second  Mrs.  Allan  wrote : 

As  regards  Edgar  Poe,  of  my  own  knowledge  I  know  nothing; 
I  only  saw  him  twice ;  but  all  I  heard  of  him,  from  those  who  had 
lived  with  him,  was  a  tissue  of  ingratitude,  fraud  and  deceit.  Mr. 
Poe  had  not  lived  under  Mr.  Allan's  roof  for  two  years  before  my 
marriage  (1830)  and  no  one  knew  his  whereabouts;  his  letters,  which 
were  very  scarce,  were  dated  from  St.  Petersburgh,  Russia,  although 
he  had  enlisted  in  the  army  at  Boston. 

The  little  that  is  known  concerning  this  incident,  as  well 
as  many  other  facts  of  Poe's  life  at  that  time,  is  contained 
in  letters  held  in  the  archives  of  the  Valentine  Museum 
at  Richmond.  Although  the  contents  are  known  to  a  few 
and  although  they  do  not  reflect  seriously  on  Poe,  they  are 
said  to  contain  certain  passages  involving  persons  or 
families  still  in  Richmond,  and  for  that  reason  they  have 
not  been  made  public.  Concealment  of  any  kind  is  an 
unfortunate  circumstance:  whatever  may  be  the  result 
of  future  investigation,  there  is  always  a  tendency  to 
exaggerate  the  most  ordinary  events,  and  the  smallest  fact 
may  be  magnified  into  an  unwarrantable  statement. 

Possibly  Poe  spent  a  part  of  his  time  in  Europe,  although 
it  is  improbable  the  distorted  account  that  he  related  to 
Mrs.  Shew  during  one  of  his  mental  attacks,  regarding 
these  European  experiences,  had  any  foundation  in  fact. 


24        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

At  least  for  some  months  Poe  did  live  in  Baltimore  and 
Richmond,  and  many  definite  details  of  his  residence  in 
those  two  cities  are  known. 

It  is  certain  that  Poe's  mental  capacity  fully  developed 
during  this  period,  and  that  when  he  appeared  before  John 
P.  Kennedy  he  had  reached  the  zenith  of  his  intellectual 
power. 

It  was  the  Golden  Age  of  his  literary  achievement,  and 
that  his  genius  and  capacity  had  reached  their  full 
development  is  proved  by  the  quality  and  quantity  of 
tales  that  were  included  in  the  "Folio  Club."  It  was  this 
marvelous  collection  of  stories  that  gained  for  him  not 
only  literary  recognition,  but  what  at  that  time  was 
apparently  needed  more — money  for  the  commonest  neces 
saries  of  life.  Not  only  was  he  ill-clad,  but,  apparently,  he 
often  did  not  have  sufficient  food. 

The  cause  of  this  destitution  was  undoubtedly  the 
serious  and  repeated  seizures  by  his  hereditary  malady. 
From  this  time  on  we  know  every  important  event  of  Poe's 
life,  and  both  his  misfortunes  and  his  successes  have 
been  minutely  described.  We  find  running  through  these 
statements  accounts  of  intercurrent  attacks  of  sickness 
which  incapacitated  him  for  days  or  weeks,  at  first 
infrequent  but  slowly  increasing  in  number  and  severity 
until  we  have  a  classical  picture  of  typical  dipsomania,  with 
its  accompanying  depressions  and  mental  abnormalities. 
These  tell  the  story  of  the  evil  that  pursued  him  and  con 
tinually  thwarted  the  best  of  intentions,  and  which  made 
his  life  a  series  of  financial  struggles  and  failures. 

Poe  probably  was  not  idle,  and  could  we  obtain  all  the 
facts,  or  the  contemporary  magazines  that  contained  these 
"facts,"  we  might  find  contributions  that  could  rightly 
be  attributed  to  Poe.  As  far  as  I  know,  Poe  rarely  signed 
his  name  to  an  article,  and  only  occasionally  used  even 
his  initials.  It  is  certain  that  he  later  republished,  and 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        25 

preserved  whatever  he  believed  to  be  worthy  of  public 
recognition. 

The  marvelous  mental  transformation  that  certainly 
did  take  place  between  the  publication  of  "Al  Aaraaf," 
when  Poe  was  twenty,  and  his  appearance  at  the  age  of 
twenty-four,  when  he  presented  Kennedy  with  his  "Tales 
of  the  Folio  Club/'  cannot  be  accounted  for  by  studying 
"The  Best  Hundred  Authors,"  or  that  five-foot  shelf  so 
extensively  and  adroitly  advertised.  Exactly  what  hast 
ened  the  flowering  of  the  genius  with  which  nature  en 
dowed  him  we  do  not  know ;  but  we  must  count  the  years 
between  1832  and  1840,  when  Poe,  according  to  mortality 
tables,  was  still  a  very  young  man,  as  those  of  his  full 
maturity.  Other  writers  have  developed  as  early  and 
shown  more  pronounced  maturity  at  the  same  age.  "Tam 
erlane"  can,  in  no  way,  compare  with  Quern  Mab,  which 
Shelley  wrote  when  he  was  eighteen ;  yet  these  crude  pro 
ductions  were  the  harbingers  of  greater  achievements. 
There  is  necessarily  some  smoke  and  sputter  before  the 
rocket  bursts  with  its  scintillating  brilliants. 

In  spite  of  the  aid  given  Poe  by  his  guardian,  and  the  lit 
erary  position  gained  by  the  "Tales  of  the  Folio  Club,"  his 
periodical  seizures  alienated  many  of  his  friends;  and  he 
was  compelled  to  call  on  his  literary  discoverer,  Kennedy, 
who  thus  writes : 

It  is  many  years  ago,  I  think  perhaps  as  early  as  1833  or  1834,  that 
I  found  him  in  Baltimore  in  a  state  of  starvation.  I  gave  him  clothes, 
free  access  to  my  table,  and  the  use  of  horses  for  exercise  whenever 
he  chose,  in  fact  brought  him  up  from  the  very  edge  of  despair. 

The  many  indiscretions  with  which  Poe  is  charged  at 
this  time,  which  changed  some  of  his  former  friends  into 
enemies  were  the  result  of  his  hereditary  infirmity. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  dipsomania  is  not  only 
periodical  in  its  seizures,  but  that,  even  in  its  earliest 
manifestations,  the  patient  is  not  responsible.  His  actions 


26        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

may  outrage  friends  who  assume  to  be  vicious  those  things 
which  are  in  reality  the  result  of  disease. 

Although  Woodberry  has  covered  the  controverted  life 
of  Poe,  and  has  fully — almost  too  fully — stated  the  acts 
on  which  Griswold  based  his  defamatory  statements, 
neither  Woodberry  nor  any  other  biographer  has  given 
full  consideration  to  the  heredity,  the  obsessions,  the  com 
pulsions,  the  frequently  recurring  spells  of  depression,  and 
the  nervous  seizures  that  are  a  part  of  Poe's  psychology, 
and  on  which  we  must  base  the  explanation  of  those  acts 
that  have  been  so  bitterly  criticised. 

For  this  reason  I  shall  deal  with  Poe's  literary  work  only 
as  far  as  it  exhibits  mental  disturbance.  I  must  discuss  the 
physical  facts  as  they  affected  his  somatic  life  and  ended 
in  his  early  death. 

Undoubtedly  the  necessity  for  some  form  of  mental 
excitement  manifested  itself  early,  as  the  records  of  the 
life  Poe  led  at  the  University  of  Virginia  and  at  West  Point, 
as  to  both  gambling  and  drinking,  attest. 

It  is  entirely  possible  that  the  manners  and  customs  of 
those  days,  as  well  as  the  stimulants  which,  even  as  a 
child,  were  given  Poe,  early  developed  the  appetite  that 
was  by  inheritance  a  part  of  him.  It  is,  in  my  judgment, 
certain  that,  even  without  this  environment,  there  was  a 
morbid  predisposition  which,  sooner  or  later,  would  have 
overwhelmed  him.  His  disappearance  for  two  or  three 
years  and  the  fact  that  his  changed  facial  appearance  and 
his  striking  personality  could  not  have  been  recently 
acquired,  make  me  believe  that  those  years  were  not 
passed  faithfully  and  temperately  serving  in  the  army,  as 
we  know  that  Perry  did  serve.  We  must  believe  that 
during  this  time  Poe  rapidly  developed  intellectually,  even 
if  he  deteriorated  morally ;  and  this  necessarily  indicates 
that,  although  there  might  have  been  periods  of  nervous 
disturbance,  they  were  not  continuous,  and,  as  is  the  rule 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        27 

in  such  cases,  that  this  disease  was  slowly  assuming  the 
periodical  character  it  usually  manifests. 

The  first  definite  evidence  we  have  of  this  progressive 
mental  change  is  in  a  letter  Poe  wrote  to  Kennedy  in  1 83  5 : 

Excuse  me,  my  dear  Sir,  if  in  this  letter  you  find  much  incoher- 
ency.  .  .  .  My  feelings  at  this  moment  are  pitiable  indeed.  I  am 
suffering  under  a  depression  of  spirits  such  as  I  have  never  before 
suffered.  I  have  struggled  in  vain  against  the  influence  of  this  melan 
choly — you  will  believe  me,  when  I  say  that  I  am  miserable  in  spite  of 
the  great  improvement  in  my  circumstances.  I  say  that  you  will  be 
lieve  me,  and  for  this  simple  reason,  that  a  man  who  is  writing  for 
effect  does  not  write  thus.  My  heart  is  open  before  you — if  it  be  worth 
reading,  read  it.  I  am  wretched,  and  know  not  why.  Console  me, — for 
you  can.  But  let  it  be  quickly  or  it  will  be  too  late.  Convince  me  that 
it  is  worth  one's  while — that  it  is  at  all  necessary  to  live,  and  you 
will  prove  yourself  indeed  my  friend.  Persuade  me  to  do  what  is  right. 
I  do  not  mean  this.  I  do  not  mean  that  you  should  consider  what  I 
now  write  you  a  jest — oh,  pity  me!  for  I  feel  that  my  words  are  inco 
herent — but  I  will  recover  myself.  You  will  not  fail  to  see  that  I  am 
suffering  under  depression  of  spirits  which  will  ruin  me  should  it  be 
long  continued.  Write  me  then  and  quickly.  Urge  me  to  do  what  is 
right.  Fail  not — as  you  value  your  peace  of  mind  hereafter. 

These  cries  of  agony  are  not  unusual  in  the  writings  of 
men  of  genius,  and  an  intimate  study  of  their  lives  shows 
that  many  of  them  suffered  from  periodical  depression  and 
various  mental  obsessions,  which  at  times  amounted  to 
absolute  disease.  It  is  a  phase  in  the  life  history  of  many 
who  possess  this  heredity,  and  some  cannot  resist  the  call. 

Tolstoi  in  his  "Confessions/'  John  Stuart  Mill  in  his 
"Autobiography,"  George  Eliot,  DeQuincey,  Shelley,  and 
many  other  writers  describe  these  critical  periods. 

Tolstoi  tells  us  that  his  desires  as  to  life  and  his  views  of 
death  were  reversed : 

The  thought  of  suicide  came  to  me  as  naturally  as  had  come  be 
fore  the  ideas  of  improving  life.  That  thought  was  so  seductive  that  I 
had  to  use  cunning  against  myself,  lest  I  should  rashly  execute  it. 
At  such  times,  I,  a  happy  man,  hid  a  rope  from  myself,  so  that  I 


28        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

should  not  hang  myself  on  a  cross-beam  between  two  closets  in  my 
room,  and  did  not  go  out  hunting  with  a  gun  in  order  not  to  be 
tempted  by  an  easy  way  of  doing  away  with  myself. 

...  I  had  a  good,  loving  and  beloved  wife,  good  children  and  a 
large  estate.  I  was  respected  by  my  neighbors  and  friends,  was 
praised  by  strangers  and,  without  any  self  deception,  could  consider 
my  name  famous.  With  all  that,  I  was  not  deranged  or  mentally 
unsound ;  on  the  contrary  I  was  in  the  full  command  of  my  mental, 
and  physical  powers,  such  as  I  had  rarely  met  with  in  men  of  my 
age,  .  .  .  and  while  in  this  condition  I  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that 
I  could  not  live  and,  fearing  death,  I  had  to  use  cunning  against  myself, 
in  order  that  I  might  not  take  my  life.  .  .  .  Long  ago  has  been  told 
the  Eastern  Story  about  the  traveller  who  in  the  Steppe  is  overtaken 
by  an  infuriated  beast.  Trying  to  save  himself  from  this  animal  the 
traveller  jumps  into  a  waterless  well  but  at  the  bottom  he  sees  a  dragon 
who  opens  his  jaws  in  order  to  swallow  him.  And  the  unfortunate  man 
does  not  dare  climb  out  lest  he  perish  from  the  infuriated  beast,  and 
does  not  dare  jump  down  to  the  bottom  of  the  well,  lest  he  be  de 
voured  by  the  dragon,  and  so  clutches  the  twig  of  a  wild  bush  growing 
in  the  cleft  of  the  wall  and  holds  on  to  it.  His  hands  grow  weak  and 
he  feels  that  he  must  soon  surrender  to  the  peril  that  awaits  him  on 
either  side;  but  he  still  holds  on  and  sees  two  mice,  one  white  and  the 
other  black,  in  even  measure  making  a  circle  around  the  main  trunk 
of  the  bush  to  which  he  is  clinging,  and  nibbling  at  it  on  all  sides. 
Now  at  any  moment  the  bush  will  break  and  be  torn  off  and  he 
will  fall  into  the  dragon's  jaws.  The  traveller  sees  this  and  knows  he 
will  inevitably  perish,  and  while  he  is  still  clinging,  he  sees  some  drops 
of  honey  hanging  on  the  leaves  of  the  bush,  and  so  reaches  out  to 
them,  and  with  his  tongue  he  licks  the  leaves.  Just  so  I  hold  on  to 
this  branch  of  life,  knowing  that  the  dragon  of  death  is  inevitably 
waiting  for  me,  ready  to  tear  me  into  pieces,  and  I  cannot  understand 
why  I  have  fallen  on  such  suffering.  And  I  try  to  lick  that  honey, 
which  used  to  give  me  pleasure ;  but  now  it  no  longer  gives  me  joy, 
and  the  white  mouse  and  the  black  mouse,  day  and  night,  nibble  at 
the  branch  to  which  I  am  holding.  I  clearly  see  the  dragon  and  the 
honey  is  no  longer  sweet  to  me.  I  see  only  the  inevitable  dragon  and 
the  mice,  and  I  am  unable  to  turn  my  glance  away  from  them.  This  is 
not  a  fable  but  a  veritable,  indisputable,  comprehensible  truth. 

This  is  the  cry  of  a  lost  soul,  and  I  know  nothing  more 
pathetic,  or  that  better  describes  the  mental  torture  from 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        29 

which  such  patients  suffer.  This  desire  for  death  is  a 
psychological   problem  and  admits  of  many  solutions. 
Perhaps  the  best  is  that  given  by  one  of  our  greatest  poets : 
Whatever  crazy  sorrow  saith, 
No  life  that  breathes  with  human  breath 
Has  ever  truly  long'd  for  death. 
Tis  life,  whereof  our  nerves  are  scant, 
Oh  Life,  not  Death,  for  which  we  pant, 
More  life,  and  fuller,  that  I  want. 

Tennyson  could  not  have  written  The  Two  Voices  had 
he  not  passed  through  some  such  experience.  It  is  the  cry 
of  a  soul-obsessed  melancholiac. 

Shelley  expresses  his  own  abnormal  sensations  in  a 
somewhat  different  manner : 

My  feelings  at  intervals  are  of  a  deadly  and  torpid  kind,  or  awak 
ened  to  such  a  degree  of  unnatural  and  keen  excitement,  that  only  to 
instance  the  organ  of  sight,  I  find  the  very  blades  of  grass  and  the 
boughs  of  distant  trees  present  themselves  to  me  with  microscopic 
distinctness.  Towards  evening  I  sink  into  a  state  of  lethargy  and 
inanimation,  and  often  remain  for  hours  on  the  sofa  between  sleep 
and  waking,  a  prey  to  the  most  painful  irritability  of  thought.  Such, 
with  little  intermission,  is  my  condition. 

John  Stuart  Mill,  in  his  "Autobiography,"  thus  describes 
a  period  of  mental  depression : 

I  was  in  a  dull  state  of  nerves,  such  as  everybody  is  occasionally 
liable  to;  ...  the  state,  I  should  think,  in  which  converts  to  Metho 
dism  usually  are,  when  smitten  by  their  first  'conviction  of  sin/ 

In  this  frame  of  mind  it  occurred  to  me  to  put  the  question  directly 
to  myself:  'Suppose  that  all  your  objects  in  life  were  realized;  .  .  . 
would  this  be  a  great  joy  and  happiness  to  you?'  And  an  irrepres 
sible  self-consciousness  distinctly  answered,  'no!'  At  this  my  heart 
sank  within  me:  the  whole  foundation  on  which  my  life  was  con 
structed  fell  down.  ...  I  seemed  to  have  nothing  left  to  live  for. 

At  first  I  had  hoped  that  the  cloud  would  pass  away  of  itself; 
but  it  did  not.  ...  I  carried  it  with  me  into  all  companies,  into  all 
occupations.  .  .  .  For  some  months  the  cloud  seemed  to  grow  thicker 
and  thicker.  The  lines  in  Coleridge's  'Dejection'  exactly  described 
my  case : 


30        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

'A  grief  without  a  pang,  void,  dark  and  drear, 
A  drowsy,  stifled,  unimpassioned  grief, 
Which  finds  no  natural  outlet  or  relief 
In  word,  or  sigh,  or  tear/ 

In  vain  I  sought  relief  from  my  favorite  books,  ...  I  read  them 
now  without  feeling,  or  with  the  accustomed  feeling  minus  all  its 
charm:  ...  I  was  thus  left  stranded  at  the  commencement  of  my 
voyage,  with  a  well  equipped  ship  and  rudder  but  no  sail.  ...  I  had 
had  some  gratification  of  vanity  at  too  early  an  age ;  I  had  attained 
some  distinction,  and  felt  myself  of  some  importance,  before  the  desire 
of  distinction  and  importance  had  grown  into  a  passion.  The  fountains 
of  vanity  and  ambitions  seemed  to  have  dried  up  within  me,  as  com 
pletely  as  those  of  benevolence.  These  were  the  thoughts  that  mingled 
with  the  dry  heavy  dejection  of  the  melancholy  winter  of  1826-27. 
...  In  all  probability  my  case  was  not  so  peculiar  as  I  had  imagined 
it,  and  I  doubt  not  that  many  others  have  passed  through  a  similar 
state.  ...  I  frequently  asked  myself,  if  I  could,  or  if  I  was  bound  to 
go  on  living,  when  life  must  be  passed  in  this  manner.  I  generally 
answered  to  myself,  that  I  did  not  think  I  could  possibly  bear  it  be 
yond  a  year.  When,  however,  not  more  than  half  that  duration  of 
time  had  elapsed,  a  small  ray  of  light  broke  in  upon  my  gloom.  .  .  . 
Relieved  from  my  ever  present  sense  of  irremediable  wretchedness,  I 
gradually  found  that  the  ordinary  incidents  of  life  could  again  give 
me  some  pleasure ;  that  I  could  again  find  enjoyment,  not  intense,  but 
sufficient  for  cheerfulness,  in  sunshine  and  sky,  in  books,  in  conver 
sation,  in  public  affairs;  .  .  .  thus  the  cloud  gradually  drew  off,  and 
I  again  enjoyed  life;  and  though  I  had  several  relapses,  some  of 
which  lasted  for  months,  I  never  again  was  as  miserable  as  I  had 
been. 

Mill  was  right  in  believing  that  many  others  had 
"passed  through  a  similar  state."  But  not  all  have  the  for 
titude  to  bear  it  so  patiently,  and  allow  time  to  conquer  so 
victoriously. 

Sorrow's  peculiar  style  and  morbid  introspective  imag 
inings  necessarily  had  for  a  foundation  this  depressive, 
and,  at  times,  absolutely  disordered  mental  state  due  to  a 
neurosis.  His  peculiar  understanding  of  Peter  the  Welch 
preacher,  the  "Apple- woman,"  as  well  as  many  of  his 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        31 

other  characters,  must  have  had  as  a  basis  personal  ex 
perience  with  these  states  of  depression.  As  illustrating 
this  state  of  mind  his  description  of  the  "Horror'*  that 
came  upon  him  in  the  dingle  is  unsurpassed. 

Heaviness  had  suddenly  come  over  me,  heaviness  of  heart  and 
of  body  also.  ...  So  there  I  sat  in  the  dingle  upon  my  stone, 
nerveless  and  hopeless :  there  I  sat  with  my  head  leaning  upon  my 
hand,  and  began  to  cast  anxious,  unquiet  looks  about  the  dingle — 
the  entire  hollow  was  now  in  deep  shade — I  cast  my  eyes  up;  there 
was  a  golden  gleam  on  the  tops  of  the  trees  which  grew  toward  the 
upper  part  of  the  dingle;  but  lower  down  all  was  gloom  and 
twilight — yet  when  I  first  sat  down  on  my  stone,  the  sun  was 
right  over  the  dingle — so  I  must  have  sat  a  long,  long  time  upon 
my  stone.  .  .  .  Suddenly  I  started  up,  and  could  scarcely 
repress  the  shriek  which  was  rising  to  my  lips.  Was  it  possible? 
Yes,  all  too  certain;  the  evil  one  was  upon  me;  the  inscrutable 
horror  which  I  had  felt  in  my  boyhood  had  once  more  taken 
possession  of  me.  ...  I  felt  it  gathering  force,  and  making 
me  more  wholly  its  own.  What  should  I  do? — resist,  of  course; 
and  I  did  resist.  I  grasped,  I  tore,  and  strove  to  fling  it  from  me; 
but  of  what  avail  was  my  effort?  I  could  only  have  got  rid  of  it 
by  getting  rid  of  myself.  I  rushed  among  the  trees,  and  struck  at 
them  with  my  bare  fists,  and  dashed  my  head  against  them,  but  I 
felt  no  pain.  How  could  I  feel  pain  with  the  horror  upon  me  I  And 
then  I  flung  myself  on  the  ground,  gnawed  the  earth,  and  swal 
lowed  it;  and  then  I  looked  round;  it  was  almost  total  darkness 
in  the  dingle,  and  the  darkness  added  to  my  horror. 

De  Quincey,  in  a  letter  he  wrote  to  Miss  Mitford, 
attempts  to  make  plain  the  mental  agony  from  which  he 
occasionally  suffered : 

No  purpose  could  be  answered  by  my  vainly  endeavouring  to 
make  intelligible  for  my  daughters  what  I  cannot  make  intelligible  for 
myself — the  undecipherable  horror  that  night  and  day  broods  over 
my  nervous  system.  One  effect  of  this  is  to  cause,  at  uncertain  inter 
vals,  such  whirlwinds  of  impatience  as  precipitate  me  violently, 
whether  I  will  or  not,  into  acts  that  would  seem  insanities,  but  are 
not  such  in  fact,  as  my  understanding  is  never  under  any  delusion. 
Whatever  I  am  writing  suddenly  becomes  overspread  with  a  dark 


32        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

frenzy  of  horror.  I  am  using  words,  perhaps,  that  are  tautologic ;  but  it 
is  because  no  language  can  give  expression  to  the  sudden  storm  of 
frightful  revelations  opening  upon  me  from  an  eternity  not  coming, 
but  past  and  irrevocable.  Whatever  I  may  have  been  writing  is  sud 
denly  wrapt,  as  it  were,  in  one  sheet  of  consuming  fire — the  very  paper 
is  poisoned  to  my  eyes.  I  cannot  endure  to  look  at  it,  and  I  sweep  it 
away  into  vast  piles  of  unfinished  letters,  or  inchoate  essays  begun  and 
interrupted  under  circumstances  the  same  in  kind,  though  differing 
unaccountably  in  degree.  .  .  .  One  inevitable  suggestion  at  first  arose 
to  everybody  consulted — viz.,  that  it  might  be  some  horrible  recoil 
from  the  long  habit  of  using  opium  to  excess.  But  this  seems  improba 
ble  for  more  reasons  that  one.  1st.  Because  previously  to  any  consid 
erable  abuse  of  opium  — viz.,  in  the  year  1812, — I  suffered  an  unac 
countable  attack  of  nervous  horror  which  lasted  for  five  months,  and 
went  off  in  one  night  as  unaccountably  as  it  had  first  come  on  in  one 
second  of  time.  I  was  at  that  time  perfectly  well. 

DeQuincey,  Coleridge,  Lamb,  Swinburne,  and  others 
did  not  hesitate  to  use  opium  and  other  narcotizing  drugs 
as  well  as  stimulants  to  ease  these  prenatally  induced 
pains. 

Are  there  not  mortals  suffering  from  morbid  mental 
states  who  inhabit  a  Kingdom  undiscovered  to  most  of  us : 
those  sensitive  of  soul  and  endowed  with  an  abnormal  per 
ception  and  a  spirit  of  unrest — a  coterie  of  Sensitives 
who  wear  the  fetters  of  heredity,  and  who  can  be  neither 
measured  by  man-made  standards,  nor  judged  by  pre 
vailing  customs,  nor  bound  by  our  moral  laws ;  who  worship 
at  a  shrine  more  earthy  natures  can  not  perceive?  It  is 
possible  that  they  are  presided  over  by  a  priestess  whose 
arch- votary  thus  describes  her : 

Hush!  whisper  whilst  we  talk  of  her! 

Her  kingdom  is  not  large,  or  else  no  flesh  should  live;  but  within 
that  kingdom  all  power  is  hers.  Her  head,  turreted  like  that  of  Cybele, 
rises  almost  beyond  the  reach  of  sight.  She  droops  not ;  and  her  eyes 
rising  so  high  might  be  hidden  by  distance.  But,  being  what  they  are, 
they  cannot  be  hidden;  through  the  treble  veil  of  crape  which  she 
wears,  the  fierce  light  of  a  blazing  misery,  that  rests  not  for  matins  or 
vespers,  for  noon  of  day  or  noon  of  night,  for  ebbing  or  for  flowing 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        33 

tide,  may  be  read  from  the  very  ground.  She  is  the  defter  of  God.  She 
also  is  the  mother  of  lunacies,  and  the  suggestress  of  suicides.  Deep  lie 
the  roots  of  her  power;  but  narrow  is  the  nation  that  she  rules.  For 
she  can  approach  only  those  in  whom  a  profound  nature  has  been 
upheaved  by  central  convulsions;  in  whom  the  heart  trembles  and 
the  brain  rocks  under  conspiracies  of  tempest  from  without  and 
tempest  from  within.  She  moves  with  incalculable  motions,  bound 
ing,  and  with  a  tiger's  leaps.  She  carries  no  key ;  for,  though  coming 
rarely  amongst  men,  she  storms  all  doors  at  which  she  is  permitted 
to  enter  at  all.  And  her  name  is  Mater  Tenebrarum, — Our  Lady  of 
Darkness. 

Was  it  this  same  Kingdom  that  Poe  glimpsed  in  his 
Siope— A  Fable?* 

'Listen  to  me,  said  the  Demon,  as  he  placed  his  hand  upon  my 
head.  There  is  a  spot  upon  this  accursed  earth  which  thou  hast 
never  yet  beheld.  And  if  by  any  chance  thou  hast  beheld  it,  it  must 
have  been  in  one  of  those  vigorous  dreams  which  come  like  the 
Simoon  upon  the  brain  of  the  sleeper  who  hath  lain  down  to  sleep 
among  the  forbidden  sunbeams — among  the  sunbeams,  I  say,  which 
slide  from  off  the  solemn  columns  of  the  melancholy  temples  in  the 
wilderness.  The  region  of  which  I  speak  is  a  dreary  region  in  Lybia, 
by  the  borders  of  the  river  Zaire.  And  there  is  no  quiet  there,  nor 
silence. 

'The  waters  of  the  river  have  a  saffron  and  sickly  hue — and  they 
flow  not  onwards  to  the  sea,  but  palpitate  forever  and  forever  beneath 
the  red  eye  of  the  sun  with  a  tumultuous  and  convulsive  motion.  For 
many  miles  on  either  side  of  the  river's  oozy  bed  is  a  pale  desert  of 
gigantic  water-lilies.  They  sigh  one  unto  the  other  in  that  solitude, 
and  stretch  towards  the  heaven  their  long  ghastly  necks,  and  nod  to 
and  fro  their  everlasting  heads.  And  there  is  an  indistinct  murmur 
which  cometh  out  from  among  them  like  the  rushing  of  subterrene 
water.  And  they  sigh  one  unto  the  other.  .  .  .  And  the  tall  primoeval 
trees  rock  eternally  hither  and  thither  with  a  crashing  and  mighty 
sound.  And  from  their  high  summits,  one  by  one,  drop  everlasting 
dews.  And  at  their  roots  strange  poisonous  flowers  lie  writhing  in  per 
turbed  slumber.  And  overhead,  with  a  rustling  and  loud  noise  the 
grey  clouds  rush  westwardly  forever,  until  they  roll,  a  cataract,  over 
the  fiery  wall  of  the  horizon.  But  there  is  no  wind  throughout  the 

*First  Version  Baltimore  Book  1838. 


34        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

heaven.  And  by  the  shores  of  the  river  Zaire  there  is  neither  quiet  nor 
silence. 

'It  was  night,  and  the  rain  fell;  and,  falling,  it  was  rain,  but, 
having  fallen,  it  was  blood.  .  .  . 

'And,  all  at  once,  the  moon  arose  through  the  thin  ghastly  mist, 
and  was  crimson  in  color.  And  mine  eyes  fell  upon  a  huge  grey  rock 
which  stood  by  the  shore  of  the  river,  and  was  litten  by  the  light  of  the 
moon.  And  the  rock  was  grey,  and  ghastly,  and  tall, — and  the  rock 
was  grey.  Upon  its  front  were  characters  engraven  in  the  stone ;  .  .  . 
and  the  characters  were  DESOLATION. 

'And  I  looked  upwards,  and  there  stood  a  man  upon  the  summit 
of  the  rock.  .  .  .  And  the  outlines  of  his  figure  were  indistinct — but 
his  features  were  the  features  of  a  Deity;  for  the  mantle  of  the  night, 
and  of  the  mist,  and  of  the  moon,  and  of  the  dew,  had  left  uncovered 
the  features  of  his  face.  And  his  brow  was  lofty  with  thought,  and  his 
eye  wild  with  care ;  and  in  the  few  furrows  upon  his  cheek,  I  read  the 
fables  of  sorrow,  and  weariness,  and  disgust  with  mankind,  and  a  long 
ing  after  solitude.  ...  He  looked  down  into  the  low  unquiet  shrub 
bery,  and  up  into  the  tall  primoeval  trees,  and  up  higher  at  the 
rustling  heaven,  and  into  the  crimson  moon.  .  .  . 

'And  the  man  turned  his  attention  from  the  heaven,  and  looked 
out  upon  the  dreary  river  Zaire,  and  upon  the  yellow  ghastly  waters, 
and  upon  the  pale  legions  of  the  water-lilies. 

Then  I  cursed  the  elements  with  the  curse  of  tumult;  and  a 
frightful  tempest  gathered  in  the  heaven  where  before  there  had  been 
no  wind,  and  the  heaven  became  livid  with  the  violence  of  the  tempest 
— and  the  rain  beat  upon  the  head  of  the  man — and  the  floods  of  the 
river  came  down — and  the  river  was  tormented  into  foam — and  the 
water-lilies  shrieked  within  their  beds — and  the  forest  crumbled  before 
the  wind  — and  the  thunder  rolled, — and  the  lightning  fell — and  the 
rock  rocked  to  its  foundation.  .  . 

Then  I  grew  angry  and  cursed,  with  the  curse  of  silence,  the  river, 
and  the  lilies,and  the  wind,  and  the  forest,and  the  heaven,  and  the 
thunder,  and  the  sighs  of  the  water-lilies.  And  they  became  accursed 
and  were  still.  And  the  moon  ceased  to  totter  in  its  pathway  up  the 
heaven — and  the  thunder  died  away — and  the  lightnings  did  not  flash 
— and  the  clouds  hung  motionless — and  the  waters  sunk  to  their  level 
and  remained — and  the  trees  ceased  to  rock — and  the  water-lilies 
sighed  no  more — and  the  murmur  was  heard  no  longer  from  among 
them,  nor  any  shadow  of  sound  throughout  the  vast  illimitable  desert. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        35 

And  I  looked  upon  the  characters  of  the  rock,  and  they  were  changed 
— and  the  characters  were  SILENCE. 

'And  mine  eyes  fell  upon  the  countenance  of  the  man,  and  his 
countenance  was  wan  with  terror.  And,  hurriedly,  he  raised  his  head 
from  his  hand,  and  stood  forth  upon  the  rock,  and  listened.  But  there 
was  no  voice  throughout  the  vast  illimitable  desert,  and  the  char 
acters  upon  the  rock  were  SILENCE.  And  the  man  shuddered,  and 
turned  his  face  away,  and  fled  afar  off,  and  I  beheld  him  no  more/  .  .  . 

Visions  such  as  these  are  not  for  normal  eyes,  but  may 
be  viewed,  though  dimly,  by  those  super-mortally  hyper- 
metropic,  and  who  must  pay  the  price  for  their  genius- 
gifted  inheritance.  Many  are  overcome  by  these  hereditary 
states  of  mental  depressions  and  compulsions,  and  suicide 
ends  their  mental  struggle. 

Can  we  blame  Poe  if  he  did  resort  to  alcohol  and  nar 
cotics  that  he  might  numb  such  morbid  mental  anguish  ? 
This  attack  which  he  described  was  probably  a  character 
istic  seizure,  and  others  followed  with  increasing  frequency. 
We  know  that  they  occurred  periodically  and,  occasionally, 
interrupted  his  work. 

In  1835  Poe  was  made  acting  editor  of  the  "Southern 
Literary  Messenger/'  owned  and  managed  by  T.  W.  White. 
These  lapses  apparently  interfered  with  his  duties.  They 
seriously  discommoded  White,  and  at  times  prevented 
the  prompt  issuance  of  the  magazine.  As  early  as  1835 
White  wrote  him: 

Would  that  it  were  in  my  power  to  unbosom  myself  to  you  in 
language  such  as  I  could,  on  the  present  occasion,  wish  myself  master 
of.  I  cannot  do  it — and  therefore  must  be  content  to  speak  to  you  in 
my  plain  way.  That  you  are  sincere  in  all  your  promises  I  firmly  be 
lieve.  But,  Edgar,  when  you  once  again  tread  these  streets,  I  have  my 
fears  that  your  resolves  would  fall  through,  and  that  you  would  again 
sip  the  juice,  even  till  it  stole  away  your  senses.  You  have  fine  talents, 
Edgar, — and  you  ought  to  have  them  respected  as  well  as  yourself. 
Learn  to  respect  yourself,  and  you  will  soon  find  that  you  are  respected. 
Separate  yourself  from  the  bottle,  and  bottle  companions,  forever! 


36        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

Apparently  all  went  well  for  several  months.  In  1836 
Poe  wrote  to  his  friend  Kennedy,  evidently  with  his  former 
letter  in  mind : 

Mr.  White  is  very  liberal,  and  besides  my  salary  of  $520  pays  me 
liberally  for  extra  work,  so  that  I  receive  nearly  $800.  Next  year,  that 
is  at  the  commencement  of  the  second  volume,  I  am  to  get  $1,000. 
Besides  this  I  receive,  from  Publishers,  nearly  all  new  publications. 
My  friends  in  Richmond  have  received  me  with  open  arms,  and  my 
reputation  is  extending — especially  in  the  South.  Contrast  all  this  with 
those  circumstances  of  absolute  despair  in  which  you  found  me,  and 
you  will  see  how  great  reason  I  have  to  feel  grateful  to  God — and  to 
yourself. 

On  May  16,  1836,  Poe  was  married  to  Virginia,  the 
daughter  of  his  aunt  Mrs.  Clemm,  who  at  that  time 
was  a  child  under  the  age  of  fourteen.  He  made  a  home 
with  his  aunt  and  she  was  his  chief  support  ever  after, 
as  well  as  his  Mother-in- fact.  She  nursed  him  through 
his  seizures  and  aided  him  so  intelligently  and  loyally 
that  we  must  attribute  to  her  the  saving  grace  that 
repeatedly  snatched  Poe  from  the  brink  near  to  which  he 
frequently  and  perilously  trod.  Without  her  ministering 
aid  he  could  not  have  attained  those  literary  heights  that 
he  now  dominates. 

Nothing  definite  is  known  as  to  the  exact  cause  that 
led  to  Poe's  expulsion  from  this  little  paradise.  Until  Janu 
ary,  1837,  he  acted  as  editor;  and  during  all  this  time  the 
"Messenger"  increased  in  circulation  and  became  recog 
nized  as  one  of  the  well  edited  magazines.  White  probably 
would  have  kept  his  promises  and  would  have  continued 
the  association  indefinitely,  had  not  some  serious  inter- 
current  seizure  prevented.  While  this  cause  is  not  on 
record,  we  know  Poe's  infirmity,  and  it  is  not  difficult 
to  deduce  the  reason.  Poe  during  this  time  again  suffered 
from  depressive  seizures  and  probably  resorted  to  stimu 
lants.  White,  in  several  letters  he  wrote  to  Lucian  Minor, 
the  later  editor,  thus  refers  to  Poe : 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        37 

Poe  is  now  in  my  employ — not  as  editor.  He  is  unfortunately  rather 
dissipated — and  therefore  I  can  place  very  little  reliance  upon  him. 
His  disposition  is  quite  amiable.  He  will  be  of  some  assistance  to  me 
/      in  proofreading — at  least  I  hope  so. 

A  few  days  later  he  again  wrote : 

r  Poe  has  flew  the  track  already.  His  habits  were  not  good.  He  is  in 
addition  a  victim  of  melancholy.  I  should  not  be  at  all  astonished  to 
hear  that  he  had  been  guilty  of  suicide. 

From  these  letters  it  appears  that  Poe  was  unfitted  for 
work,  but  whether  this  was  due  to  the  fact  that  "Poe  has 
flew  the  track/'  or  to  his  depression,  which  might  in  time 
cause  him  to  be  "guilty  of  suicide,"  or  to  a  combination  of 
these  conditions  which  were  the  result  of  his  morbid  inheri 
tance,  is  an  immaterial  matter.  The  evil  predisposition  was 
slowly  asserting  itself  and  Poe  was  no  longer  entirely 
master  of  his  actions ;  he  was  swayed  by  his  compelling 
neurosis. 

Kennedy  states : 

Poe  was  irregular,  eccentric  and  querulous  and  soon  gave  up  his 
place. 

Poe  in  writing  to  Snodgrass  as  to  his  habits  at  this  time 
said: 

For  a  brief  period,  while  I  resided  at  Richmond  and  edited  the 
'Messenger'  I  certainly  did  give  way,  at  long  intervals,  to  the  tempta 
tion  held  out  by  the  spirit  of  Southern  conviviality. 

My  sensitive  temperament  could  not  stand  an  excitement  which 
was  an  everyday  matter  to  my  companions.  In  short,  it  sometimes 
happened  that  I  was  completely  intoxicated.  For  some  days  after 
each  excess  I  was  completely  prostrated  and  invariably  confined  to 
my  bed. 

It  is  not  probable  that  this  separation  was  voluntary  on 
Poe's  part,  inasmuch  as  he  accepted  articles  for  the 
"Messenger"  several  days  after  his  connection  had  ceased, 
without  referring  to  the  fact  that  he  was  no  longer  in 
editorial  charge.  He  merely  said  that  his  delay  in  answering 
was  due  to  "ill  health  and  a  weight  of  varying  and  haras- 


38        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

sing  business."  Apparently  Poe  still  hoped  to  resume  his 
former  connection.  Though  there  was  no  one  to  take  his 
position,  and  he  certainly  had  no  plans  for  the  future,  he 
resigned  from  the  "Messenger"  in  January,  1837,  leaving 
one  of  his  stories  unfinished,  and  issued  this  farewell  note : 

Mr.  Poe's  attention  being  called  in  another  direction,  he  will  de 
cline,  with  this  present  number,  the  editorial  duties  of  the  'Messenger.' 
.  .  .  With  the  best  wishes  to  the  magazine  and  to  its  few  foes  as  well 
as  to  its  many  friends,  he  is  now  desirous  of  bidding  all  parties  a 
peaceable  farewell. 

White  recognized  the  disease  from  which  Poe  suffered 
and  sympathized  with  the  victim.  At  the  same  time  he 
realized  the  impossibility  of  holding  Poe  to  routine  work. 

There  was  developed  during  this  time  the  marvelous 
critical  faculty  that  gave  the  "Messenger"  the  right  to  be 
ranked  with  the  metropolitan  journals  of  New  York  and 
Philadelphia,  and  which  established  Poe  as  a  literary 
critic  of  the  very  highest  authority.  Time  has  fully  vin 
dicated  his  criticisms  of  the  great  and  the  near-great ;  and 
many  names  are  known  to  us,  not  because  Griswold  and 
Duyckinck  included  them  in  their  anthologies  and  the 
"Encyclopedia  of  American  Literature,"  but  because  they 
have  been  pilloried  by  Poe  in  his  "Marginalia"  and 
"Literati."  It  is  true  that  many  of  these  criticisms  were 
unnecessarily  caustic. 

It  may  be  admitted  that  at  times  Poe  did  go  beyond 
legitimate  criticism  and  apparently  he  used  this  method 
to  convey  his  own  theories  of  composition  and  his  re 
jection  of  the  prevailing  modes  that  disfigured  our  early 
literature.  Fully  to  appreciate  the  enormity  of  these 
literary  crimes  one  must  read  the  "Lady's  Book,"  the 
"Gentleman's,"  the  "Burton's,"  and  the  "Graham's"  of 
those  days;  the  "Mirror  "with  Willis*  Pencillings  bytheWay 
as  well  as  less  well-known  publications  such  as  "Colum 
bian  Lady's  and  Gentleman's  Magazine,"  "Sartain's," 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        39 

''Union  Magazine,"  the  "American  Museum"  and  other 
contemporary  publications  with  their  reviews  and  trashy 
stories  and  poems.  They  are,  of  all  Americana,  the  most 
difficult  to  collect  and,  when  found,  least  repay  the  search, 
except  as  they  contain  Poe  contributions.  Most  of  these 
periodicals  have  been  dead  these  many  years;  and  the 
stones  marking  their  resting  places  are  so  overgrown  with 
the  moss  of  oblivion  that  soon  it  will  be  impossible  to 
find  them.  Even  the  "Southern  Literary  Messenger"  and 
"Broadway  Journal,"  to  each  of  which  Poe's  contributions 
gave  distinct  literary  value,  have  perished  for  lack  of 
appreciation,  so  that  complete  files  have  become  biblio 
graphical  rarities. 

Poe's  critical  faculty  was  such  that,  whatever  the 
cost,  however  hard  he  tried  to  soften  his  literary  judg 
ments  (at  times  Poe  did  fawn  when  the  wolf  pressed 
him  too  ferociously),  sooner  or  later  his  real  opinions  must 
have  utterance. 

Poe's  mind  was  elementary  and  it  saw  only  that  which 
was  essentially  true.  It  was  not  the  retort  of  the  chemist 
that  transforms  the  atoms  of  the  elements  into  the  mole 
cule,  completely  changing  form,  color,  and  substance.  It 
was  rather  the  primitive  alembic  of  the  alchemist  and, 
with  all  his  effort,  Poe  could  not  change  the  zinc  and  cop 
per  atoms  into  a  new  chemical  combination.  It  remained 
brass  and  he  detected  and  so  described  it.  He  could  not 
make  dross  into  gold,  but  he  almost  succeeded  where  the 
alchemist  failed — changing  the  leaden  weights  that  held 
him  down  into  a  glorious  aureola.  However  hard  he 
tried  to  analyze  and  render  homogeneous  the  incongru 
ous  mass,  sooner  or  later,  as  he  warmed  to  his  work,  the 
dregs  and  impurities  of  the  mixture  were  dissolved,  and 
out  of  the  capital  of  his  alembic  poured  the  liquid  essence 
of  Truth. 

He  could  reproduce  only  what,  to  his  mind,  actually  ex- 


40        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

isted,  and  it  came  forth  so  surcharged  with  literary  wrath 
that  only  the  scorched  victim  could  dissent. 

For  this  reason  many  of  Poe's  contemporaries  held  him 
in  bitter  memory  and  were  easily  persuaded  to  believe  the 
evil  reports  that  were  circulated,  although  their  basis  was 
never  investigated  or  properly  understood. 

We  know  nothing  of  Poe's  alcoholic  habits  between  his 
departure  from  Richmond  and  the  commencement  of  his 
association  with  W.  E.  Burton  in  the  conduct  of  the  ''Gen 
tleman's  Magazine,"  in  July,  1839.  This  is  probably  due 
to  the  fact  that  he  occupied  no  editorial  or  other  respon 
sible  position,  and  was  accountable  only  to  a  loving  and 
forgiving  wife  and  mother.  That  there  were  long  periods 
of  sobriety,  and  that  his  conduct  caused  no  remark,  is 
established  by  contemporary  evidence,  although  it  is  prob 
able  that  his  periodical  seizures  continued. 

Within  a  few  months  after  his  association  with  Burton 
we  find  letters  showing  that  these  attacks  were  inter 
fering  again  with  his  editorial  duties.  The  methodical, 
practical  Burton  could  not  sympathize  with  what  he 
believed  to  be  Poe's  melancholy  and  irritable  tempera 
ment;  and,  even  when  justified,  he  did  not  approve  of 
Poe's  critical  severity. 

I  am  not  trammelled  by  any  vulgar  consideration  of  expediency; 
I  would  rather  lose  money  than  by  such  undue  severity  to  wound  the 
feelings  of  a  kind  hearted  and  honorable  man. 

This  was  in  a  letter  of  expostulation  Burton  wrote  to 
Poe,  occasioned  apparently  by  some  serious  misunder 
standing,  the  exact  nature  of  which  is  not  known.  Poe, 
on  the  other  hand,  held  Burton  in  supreme  contempt, 
not  because  he  was  an  actor,  but  because  of  his  literary 
pretensions. 

Evidently  Burton  had  made  some  statement,  possibly 
using  the  word  "drunkard"  in  describing  Poe's  alcoholic 
excesses ;  for,  Jin  a  letter  that  Poe  wrote  Dr.  Snodgrass, 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY       41 

soon  after  this  time,  from  which  I  have  already  quoted, 
he  says : 

I  would  institute  a  suit,  forthwith,  for  his  personal  defamation 
of  myself.  He  would  be  unable  to  prove  the  truth  of  his  allegations.  I 
could  prove  their  falsity  and  their  malicious  intent  by  witnesses  who, 
seeing  me  at  all  hours  of  every  day,  would  have  the  best  right  to 
speak — I  mean  Burton's  own  clerk,  Morell,  and  the  compositors  of 
the  printing  office.  I  should  obtain  damages.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
I  have  never  been  scrupulous  as  to  what  I  have  said  of  him.  I  have 
always  told  him  to  his  face,  and  everybody  else,  that  I  looked  upon 
him  as  a  blackguard  and  a  villain.  This  is  notorious.  If  I  sue,  he  sues; 
you  see  how  it  is.  ...  I  would  take  it  as  an  act  of  kindness — not  to 
say  justice  on  your  part,  if  you  would  see  the  gentleman  to  whom 
you  spoke  and  ascertain  with  accuracy  all  that  may  legally  avail  me, 
what  and  when  were  the  words  he  used.  .  .  . 

You  are  a  physician,  and  I  presume  no  physician  can  have  diffi 
culty  in  detecting  a  drunkard  at  a  glance.  You  are,  moreover,  a  liter 
ary  man  well  read  in  morals.  You  will  never  be  led  to  believe  that  I 
could  write  what  I  daily  write  as  I  write  it,  were  I  what  this  villain 
would  induce  those  who  know  me  not,  to  believe.  In  fine,  I  pledge 
you  before  God,  the  solemn  word  of  a  gentleman,  that  I  am  temper 
ate  even  to  rigor. 

The  statement  which  follows,  that  "nothing  stronger 
than  water  ever  passed  my  lips,"  could  refer  only  to  his 
period  of  sobriety  during  the  time  that  he  was  editor  of 
Burton's  ''Gentleman's  Magazine." 

This  passage  bears  evidence  of  having  been  written 
immediately  after  one  of  Poe's  attacks,  while  his  brain 
was  still  sore  from  congestion  due  to  over-indulgence,  and 
when  he  was  not  altogether  responsible  for  his  actions  or 
his  speech,  as  is  frequently  the  case  following  such  seizures. 

Between  these  attacks  the  best  of  resolutions  are  made, 
and  nothing  can  induce  dipsomaniacs  to  drink;  nor  have 
they  the  slightest  realization  of  their  true  condition  or  the 
danger  of  relapse.  Such  patients  hotly  resent  criticism 
of  any  kind,  and  any  reference  to  their  habits  only  angers 
them.  Their  one  cry  is  that  they  have  completely  reformed, 


42        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

so  why  discuss  a  matter  that  is  definitely  and  unalterably 
settled?  In  their  own  opinion  their  cure  is  complete  and 
permanent. 

In  no  sense  can  Poe  be  considered  either  a  drunkard  or 
a  toper:  for  the  disease  is  periodical  in  its  seizures  and, 
between  the  attacks,  such  unfortunates  are  most  abstemi 
ous,  the  avoidance  of  alcohol  being  as  characteristic  as  is 
the  uncontrollable  desire  for  some  form  of  stimulant  or 
narcotic  when  their  nerve-storm  does  break.  Poe,  in  denying 
the  allegations,  was  self-deceived.  It  is  a  peculiarity  of 
such  persons  not  only  to  believe  that  they  have  com 
pletely  recovered,  but  also  to  resent  any  question  as  to 
permanency.  A  marked  example  of  this  was  the  functional 
heart  disturbance  Poe  at  times  exhibited,  and  which  was 
the  basis  for  Mrs.  Shew's  prognosis  of  Poe's  early  death 
because  of  an  organically  diseased  heart.  After  the  tenth 
beat  of  Poe's  heart  there  was  an  intermission,  and  the 
discovery  of  this  intermittent  action  caused  her  profound 
worry.  Evidently  these  fears  were  communicated  to  Poe, 
for  the  doggerel  that  he  wrote  was  probably  based  on  this 
"diagnosis."  Nature  is  a  queer  old  mother,  and  seems  to 
have  the  art  of  concealing  from  her  victims  the  most  hope 
less  and  incurable  of  her  diseases.  On  the  other  hand  she 
magnifies  and  exaggerates  many  of  the  symptoms  that 
are  purely  hysterical. 

It  is  possible  for  the  wise  physician  to  base  his  diagnosis 
on  the  psychology  of  such  patients.  When  one  comes  com 
plaining  of  heart  disease,  counting  his  pulse,  and  fearing 
death  from  heart  failure,  I  feel  certain  that  I  have  to  deal 
with  a  neurasthenic  whose  heart  is  organically  sound,  but 
whose  pneumogastric  nervous  system  is  deranged,  and 
that  a  disturbed  stomach  is  the  organ  involved.  The  best 
evidence  I  can  have  that  persons  are  not  insane  is  their 
fear  that  insanity  is  developing;  or  that  they  have  not 
consumption  when  they  magnify  the  slightest  bronchitis 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        43 

into  this  dread  disease.  On  the  other  hand,  when  it  is  ap 
parent  to  all  that  day  by  day  they  are  wasting  away,  such 
patients  cannot  be  made  to  realize  the  gravity  of  their  con 
dition,  and  frequently  buoy  the  hopes  of  their  friends  by 
this  courageous  attitude.  Spes  Phthisici  is  a  medical 
truism.  I  rarely  if  ever  converse  with  an  insane  person  who 
believes  that  he  is  insane.  It  is  pitiful  to  watch  a  paretic 
who  builds  his  aircastles,  dreams  his  dreams  of  untold 
wealth  and  supreme  power,  yet  never  realizes  his  loss  of 
reflex  control  which  makes  him  a  source  of  disgust  and 
loathing  to  all  who  must  meet  him  and  minister  to  his 
necessities. 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  Poe  resented  what  he  believed 
to  be  the  unjust  treatment  he  had  received,  Burton  did 
actively  interest  himself  in  securing  for  Poe  an  editorial 
connection  with  a  new  magazine.  This  was  a  consolidation 
of  the  "Gentleman's"  with  the  "Casket"  and  was  to  be 
issued  as  "Graham's."  Poe,  however,  had  reached  that 
period  in  his  morbid  mental  life  when  he  was  not,  at 
all  times,  responsible  for  his  utterances,  and  there  were 
periods  when  he  no  longer  possessed  the  ability  to  dis 
criminate  between  criticism  kindly  meant  and  utterances 
really  slanderous. 

Although  Poe  had  left  Burton  voluntarily  and  for  the 
purpose  of  establishing  a  magazine  of  his  own,  this  inten 
tion  was  abandoned  probably  because  there  was  an  inter- 
current  attack  of  his  old  malady.  Apparently  he  was  inca 
pacitated  several  weeks,  and,  on  his  recovery,  was  em 
ployed  by  George  Graham  as  associate  editor  of  the  new 
magazine.  Long  periods  of  sobriety  must  have  followed 
these  seizures,  for  much  good  work  in  the  way  of  stories, 
poems,  and  critical  reviews  by  Poe  now  appeared,  and 
Graham's  own  testimony  fully  establishes  the  kindly  rela 
tions  that  existed  between  them. 

Undoubtedly  there  were  lapses  that  caused  Poe  occas- 


44        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

ionally  to  neglect  his  editorial  duties.  Once,  on  returning 
to  his  office  after  several  days'  absence,  he  found  Griswold 
occupying  his  chair.  It  is  probable  Graham  intended  this 
substitution  to  be  only  a  temporary  arrangement.  Poe 
bitterly  resented  it,  as,  in  these  later  years,  he  did  most 
things  when  crossed,  and  refused  all  further  editorial  asso 
ciation.  Yet  he  and  Graham  remained  on  friendly  terms. 

Poe's  whole  ambition  and  efforts  were  now  centered  on 
establishing  a  new  magazine  to  be  known  as  the  * 'Stylus," 
and  this  idea  became  an  obsession. 

About  this  same  time  he  had  under  consideration  a  gov 
ernment  position  in  Philadelphia,  where  he  expected  to 
publish  his  magazine.  He  went  to  Washington  with  the 
purpose  of  securing  subscribers  for  his  new  periodical,  and 
also  of  obtaining  the  President's  sanction  for  this  political 
appointment,  hoping  to  exert  influence  through  Tyler's 
literary  sons. 

He  might  have  succeeded  in  this  had  there  not  been  a 
return  of  his  inherited  "evil  possession."  A  friend,  F.  W. 
Thomas,  who  became  alarmed  at  his  condition,  because 
he  feared  Poe  might  injure  his  political  prospects,  wrote : 

He  arrived  here  a  few  days  since.  On  the  first  evening  he  seemed 
somewhat  excited,  having  been  overpersuaded  to  take  some  port 
wine.  On  the  second  day  he  kept  pretty  steady,  but  since  then  he  has 
been,  at  intervals,  quite  unreliable.  He  exposes  himself  here  to  those 
who  may  injure  him  very  much  with  the  President,  and  thus  prevent 
us  from  doing  for  him  what  we  wish  to  do  and  what  we  can  do  if  he  is 
himself  again  in  Philadelphia. 

.  .  .  Under  all  circumstances  of  the  case,  I  think  it  advisable  for 
you  to  come  and  see  him  safely  back  to  his  home. 

Poe's  own  explanation  is  as  follows : 

I  arrived  here  in  perfect  safety,  and  sober,  about  half  past  four  .  .  . 
I  went  immediately  home,  took  a  warm  bath  and  supper,  and  then 
went  to  Clarke's.  He  thought  by  Dow's  epistle  that  I  must  not  only 
be  dead  but  buried.  ...  I  told  him  what  had  been  agreed  on — that 
I  was  a  little  sick,  and  that  Dow,  knowing  I  had  been,  in  times  past, 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY       45 

given  to  spreeing  upon  an  extensive  scale,  had  become  unduly  alarmed, 
etc.,  etc., — that  when  I  found  that  he  had  written,  I  thought  it  best  to 
come  home. 

Thomas,  who  was  an  office  holder  in  Washington,  and 
who  had  suggested  to  Poe  that  he  make  this  application, 
gives  some  interesting  details  as  to  certain  phases  of  Poe's 
sickness : 

If  he  took  but  one  glass  of  weak  wine,  or  beer,  or  cider,  the  Rubi 
con  of  the  cup  had  been  passed  with  him,  and  it  almost  always  ended 
in  excess  and  sickness.  But  he  fought  against  the  propensity  as  hard 
as  ever  Coleridge  fought  against  it  and  I  am  inclined  to  believe  after 
his  experience  and  suffering,  if  he  could  have  gotten  office  with  a 
fixed  salary  that  he  would  have  redeemed  himself,  at  least  at  this 
time.  The  accounts  of  his  derelictions  in  this  respect  after  I  knew 
him  were  very  much  exaggerated.  I  have  seen  men  who  drank  bottles 
of  wine  to  Poe's  wine  glass,  who  yet  escaped  all  imputation  of  intem 
perance.  His  was  one  of  those  temperaments  whose  only  safety  is  in 
total  abstinence.  He  suffered  terribly  after  any  indiscretion. 

For  several  years  no  one  was  associated  more  closely 
with  Poe  than  Dr.  English.  His  statement  is : 

His  offenses  against  sobriety  were  committed  at  irregular  intervals. 
He  had  not  that  physical  constitution  that  would  permit  him  to  be  a 
regular  drinker.  He  was  not  even  a  frequent  drinker  when  I  knew 
him. 

Another  friend  writes : 

I,  the  most  innocent  of  divinity  students,  at  that  time  (1847) 
while  walking  with  Poe,  and  feeling  thirsty,  pressed  him  to  take  a 
glass  of  wine  with  me.  He  declined  but  finally  compromised  by  taking 
a  glass  of  ale  with  me.  Almost  instantly  a  great  change  came  over 
him.  Previously  engaged  in  an  indescribably  eloquent  conversation 
he  became  as  if  paralyzed,  and,  with  compressed  lips  and  fixed  glassy 
eyes,  returned,  without  uttering  a  word,  to  the  house  which  we  were 
visiting.  For  hours  the  strange  spell  hung  over  him.  He  seemed  a 
changed  being,  as  if  stricken  by  some  peculiar  phase  of  insanity. 

Poe  in  a  letter  to  Eleveth  (February,  1848,)  makes  the 
following  explanation,  which  appears  to  have  been  written 


46        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

in  good  faith,  and  at  the  time  it  was  written  represented 
his  own  estimate  of  his  physical  health : 

My  habits  are  rigorously  abstemious,  and  I  omit  nothing  of  the 
natural  regimen  necessary  for  health:  i.  e.  I  rise  early,  eat  moderately, 
drink  nothing  but  water,  and  take  abundant  and  regular  exercise  in 
the  air.  But  this  is  my  private  life — my  studious  and  literary  life — 
and,  of  course,  escapes  the  eye  of  the  world.  The  desire  for  society 
comes  upon  me  only  when  I  have  become  excited  by  drink.  Then  only 
I  go — that  is,  at  these  times  only  I  have  been  in  the  practice  of  going 
among  my  friends;  who  seldom,  or,  in  fact,  never  having  seen  me 
unless  excited,  take  it  for  granted  I  am  always  so.  ...  But  enough 
of  this;  the  causes  which  maddened  me  to  the  drinking  point  are  no 
more,  and  I  am  done  drinking  forever. 

The  same  old  cry! 

Occasionally  one  of  Poe's  biographers  confuses  the  con- 
ditionof  being  "drunk,"  by  which  usually  is  meant  physical 
paralysis  accompanied  by  mental  confusion,  with  that 
more  serious  condition  of  forgetfulness  or  mental  aliena 
tion,  which  occasionally  the  mildest  stimulant  will  pro 
duce,  or  that  still  more  subtle  and  less  easily  explained 
mental  abnormality  manifested  by  a  complete  change  of 
personality.  There  is  much  evidence  that  Poe  could  take 
large  quantities  of  stimulants  without  producing  physical 
drunkenness. 

Pierre  Janet,  M.  D.  of  Paris,  one  of  our  most  recent 
writers  on  Alcoholism  regarded  as  a  disease,  asserts : 

It  is  not  sufficient  to  say  that  an  alcoholic  is  a  man  who  drinks 
alcoholic  beverages,  nor  to  add  that  he  partakes  of  such  beverages 
in  large  quantities  and  often.  We  must  not  fail  to  distinguish 
between  alcoholism  and  excess  in  drinking.  An  ordinary  drunken 
man  is  not  an  alcoholic.  He  may  possibly  become  one  but  he  is 
not  yet  one.  He  does  not  present  the  moral  defects  of  an  alcoholic. 
He  is  not  subject  to  the  same  accidents.  He  is  not  so  dangerous  to 
future  generations.  Drunkeness  consists  in  a  disorder  of  actions 
and  of  idea-association,  which  is  rapidly  evoked  by  the  absorption 
of  alcohol.  A  drunken  man  is  a  person  whose  mental  condition  was 
normal  but  who,  under  the  influence  of  alcohol,  rapidly  enters  an 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        47 

abnormal  state.  Nothing  of  the  kind  takes  place  as  regards  the 
alcoholic.  On  the  contrary  he  may  not  become  intoxicated.  .  .  . 
Alcoholism  is  not  an  intoxication  of  an  accidental  nature,  which 
will  disappear  and  leave  no  traces  if  alcohol  is  suppressed.  We 
are  dealing  with  an  alteration  of  the  mind — a  mental  disease — 
antecedent  to  the  present  absorption  of  alcohol  and  in  one  sense 
independent  of  alcohol.  This  antecedent  alteration  explains  the 
role  that  the  absorption  of  alcohol  plays  and  also  the  intense 
craving  that  alcoholics  manifest  for  their  particular  form  of  poison. 

After  dipsomania  has  reached  that  stage  where  organic 
changes  have  taken  place  in  the  coverings  of  the  brain,  the 
slightest  alcoholic  stimulation  may  produce  profound  dis 
turbance,  morally  and  mentally.  One  drink  may  change 
the  whole  moral  atmosphere  and  produce  a  state  of  mental 
irresponsibility,  even  when  there  is  no  corresponding 
physical  change  apparent.  Occasionally,  even  without  any 
stimulant,  there  may  develop  an  abnormal  mental  condi 
tion,  the  so-called  change  in  personality  which  we  so  freely 
discuss  without  any  real  knowledge  as  to  how  it  does  occur, 
further  than  that  there  is  a  changed  mental  life.  Things  are 
said  and  done  while  in  this  condition  that  are  totally  op 
posed  to  the  speech  and  conduct  ordinarily  characterizing 
these  patients,  and,  on  recovery,  they  may  have  no  memory 
of  what  has  occurred. 

After  this  failure  to  establish  either  himself  or  his  jour 
nal,  Poe  left  Philadelphia  and  took  up  his  residence  in  New 
York.  There  he  was  employed  by  N.  P.  Willis  for  detail 
work  on  the ' 'Mirror."  The  next  eighteen  months  he  led  a 
more  or  less  abstemious  life,  although  there  is  a  record  of 
at  least  two  relapses. 

Poe's  reputation  was  now  fully  established  and  he  was 
received,  and  was  visited,  by  literary  New  York.  In  con 
sequence  we  have  many  intimate  details  of  his  life  and  sur 
roundings  both  from  visitors  at  Fordham  and  from  those 
who  met  him  in  the  salons  of  those  days. 

Although  Poe's  employment  on  the  "Mirror"  was  of  but 


48        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

three  months'  duration,  its  petty  details  and  necessarily 
regular  hours  were  most  trying.  With  all  its  requirements, 
however,  Poe  most  faithfully  complied.  This  connection 
gave  Willis  a  first  hand  and  intimate  acquaintance  with 
Poe  which  he  later  used  in  refutation  of  the  memoir  Gris- 
wold  published. 

Poe's  connection  with  the  ''Mirror"  ceased  in  February, 
1845,  at  which  time  there  was  published,  both  in  the 
"Mirror'*  and  in  the  " American  Whig  Review"  Poe's  most 
famous  poem,  The  Raven.  This  poem  is  probably  better 
known  to  the  world  than  any  other  in  English  literature. 
While  it  is  possible  that  had  it  not  been  for  The  Raven 
Poe's  name  would  have  meant  no  more  than  that  of  Willis, 
Paulding,  or  others  of  the  early  American  writers,  this  poem 
has  been  his  redemption  and  finally  his  vindication. 

We  must  judge  Poe  by  his  works  rather  than  by  the 
hasty  and  ill-natured  conclusions  of  certain  of  his  con 
temporaries.  He  cannot  be  held  responsible  for  his  heredi 
tary  seizures  and  ought  to  be  judged  leniently.  He  should 
be  classed  with  those  equally  unfortunate  in  the  matter 
of  heredity  or  habit.  Lamb,  Shelley,  Swinburne,  Coleridge 
and  De  Quincey,  as  associates,  would  have  constituted  a 
literary  Aidenn  which  even  Poe,  solitary  that  he  was,  might 
have  welcomed.  Surely  his  life  will  bear  a  far  fuller  investi 
gation  than  will  certain  of  those  I  have  mentioned. 

It  has  been  to  me  a  cause  of  wonder  that  a  single  poem  or 
story  has  not  only  established  a  literary  reputation,  but 
has  transmitted  the  writer's  name  to  posterity  in  some 
definite  way.  The  name  of  Gray  is  known  to  us,  not  by 
reason  of  his  heavy  and  dull  poetical  essays,  but  by  the 
Elegy  which,  in  a  peculiar  way,  appeals  both  to  the  un 
derstanding  and  the  heart.  Shelley's  name  might  have  at 
tracted  the  attention  of  the  literati  even  without  The 
Skylark  and  The  Cloud — to  me  the  most  beloved  of  all 
poems :  few  would  have  had  the  patience  to  search  for  the 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        49 

beauties  of  his  long  poems.  Coleridge  might  have  ranked  as 
an   essayist   or   monologist,    but    suppress    the  Ancient 
Mariner  and  his  name  would  have  been  unknown  to  the 
great  majority  of  readers. 
That  stanza: 

Westward  the  course  of  empire  takes  its  way ; 

The  four  first  acts  already  passed, 
A  fifth  shall  close  the  drama  with  the  day; 

Time's  noblest  offspring  is  the  last. 

has  given  a  substance  that  is  real  and  a  reputation  that  is 
permanent  to  a  transcendental  philosopher  who  taught 
the  non-existence  of  things  material.  Neither  as  a  poet 
nor  as  a  scientist  has  Berkeley  earned  the  distinction  that 
now  immortalizes  his  name.  His  only  contribution  to 
science  was  his  elaborate  treatise  on  "Tar  Water"  as  a 
cure  of  human  ills,  ranking  in  scientific  value  with  Digby's 
"Weapon  Salve" ;  nor  can  we  recognize  him  as  a  poet,  for 
the  verses  containing  these  lines  were  his  only  contribution 
to  literature  and  faulty  as  they  are  in  prosody  the  pre 
ceding  lines  are  worse.  Nor  does  he  deserve  a  reputation 
as  a  philosopher,  for  his  "Dialogues"  and  his  "Principles  of 
Human  Knowledge"  have  become  a  part  of 

That  dust  of  Systems  and  of  Creeds 
which  clog  and  cumber  the  world  with  worthless  theories. 

Even  though  this  stanza  refers  to  a  college  Berkeley 
was  attempting  to  establish  in  Bermuda,  BERKELEY  has 
been  selected  as  the  name  of  my  own  alma  mater:  a  greater 
honor  could  have  been  conferred  on  no  man  or  a  more 
noble  monument  erected  in  his  memory. 

It  was  about  this  time,  through  their  mutual  friend, 
Lowell,  that  Charles  F.  Briggs  and  Poe  met.  Briggs  thus 
records  his  first  impression  of  Poe : 

I  like  Poe  exceedingly  well.  Mr.  Griswold  has  told  me  shocking  bad 
stories  about  him,  which  his  whole  demeanor  contradicts.  ...  I  have 


50        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

always  strangely  misunderstood  Poe,  from  thinking  him  one  of  the 
Graham  and  Godey  species,  but  I  find  him  as  different  as  possible. 

In  March,  1 845,  Briggs,  who  had  established  'The Broad 
way  Journal,"  associated  Poe  as  joint  editor.  In  the  begin 
ning  all  was  harmonious  and  Briggs  again  wrote : 

The  Rev.  Mr.  Griswold  of  Philadelphia  told  me  some  damnable 
lies  about  him,  but  a  personal  acquaintance  has  induced  me  to  think 
highly  of  him. 

That  Poe  possessed  a  most  pleasing  personality  when  he 
was  normal  and  responsible  for  his  actions,  there  is  much 
evidence;  but  there  were  times,  and  these  periods  were 
now  recurring  more  frequently,  when  his  mental  obsession 
dominated. 

From  this  time  on  Poe's  creative  work  practically 
ceased ;  in  its  place  there  appeared  a  spirit  of  carping  criti 
cism  and  an  intolerance  of  the  work  of  others. 

To  this  period  belongs  "The  Longfellow  War,"  which 
reflects  Poe's  abnormal  mental  state.  While  contributing 
to  the  "Mirror"  Poe  passed  the  following  criticism  on 
Longfellow's  "Waif": 

Is  it  infected  with  a  moral  taint — or  is  this  a  mere  freak  of  our 
fancy  ?  We  shall  be  pleased  if  it  be  so ;  but  there  does  appear  in  this 
little  volume  a  very  careful  avoidance  of  all  American  poets  who  may 
be  supposed  to  interfere  with  the  claims  of  Mr.  Longfellow.  These  men 
Mr.  Longfellow  can  continuously  imitate  (is  that  the  word?)  and  never 
yet  incidentally  commend. 

Poe — a  normal  Poe — could  not  have  insinuated  what 
this  passage  evidently  does  imply,  viz :  that  Longfellow 
was  making  use  of  Poe's  work  as  a  model  for  the  poems 
contained  in  this  volume ;  for,  to  Poe's  ego,  there  was  no 
other  "American  poet."  This  criticism  gave  great  offense 
to  Longfellow's  friends ;  yet  Longfellow  did  not  resent  it, 
and  thus  dismisses  the  matter : 

The  harshness  of  his  criticisms  I  have  never  attributed  to  anything 
but  the  irritation  of  a  sensitive  nature,  chafed  by  some  indefinite  sense 
of  wrong. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        51 

^   •/. 

Poe  formerly  had  declared  that  he  regarded  Longfellow 
as  the  greatest  of  our  poets ;  and,  while  posterity  has  not 
placed  him  among  the  first,  certainly  he  ranks  high,  and 
deserves  the  recognition  he  has  received. 

One  "Outis"  answered  Poe's  criticism  in  a  style  equally 
bitter,  and  the  war  was  on — one  that  delighted  Poe,  for, 
owing  to  the  morbid  state  which  was  developing,  he  en 
joyed  the  fight.  His  excited  brain  took  fire,  and,  what 
possibly  was  at  first  a  passing  thought  became  a  deep  con 
viction.  Poe  seriously  attempted  to  prove  that  Longfellow 
was  a  plagiarist  and  an  imitator. 

This'4  war  "was  continued  in  the  4 'Broad  way  Journal." 
Briggs,  while  not  approving,  wrote : 

Poe  is  a  monomaniac  on  the  subject  of  Plagiarism,  and  I  thought  it 
best  to  allow  him  to  ride  his  hobby  to  death  at  the  outset  and  be  done 
with  it. 

It  was  not  the  general  charge  of  plagiarism  that  makes 
me  believe  that  the  line  of  sane  criticism  had  been  passed, 
for  Poe  always  posed  as  an  expert  in  detecting  simi 
larities.  That  he  could  have  believed,  as  he  appeared  to 
believe,  that  Longfellow  was  imitating  him — and  evi 
dently  the  grievance  was  a  personal  one — is  not  consonant 
with  Poe's  literary  acumen. 

Although  it  is  probable  that  Poe  and  Longfellow  never 
met,  there  was  a  literary  understanding  between  them  and 
letters  passed.  I  have  in  my  possession  a  letter  dated 
May  19,  1841,  from  Longfellow  to  Poe,  evidently  written 
in  answer  to  one  that  he  had  received  from  Poe,  the  con 
tents  of  which  are  not  known.  The  letter  is  slightly  de 
fective,  caused  by  Longfellow's  signature  having  been 
cut  out. 

Dear  Sir: 

Your  favor  of  the  3rd  inst.  with  the  two  Nos.  of  the  magazine 
reached  me  [here  a]  day  or  two  ago,  which  will  account  [for  my 
delay  and  the  fact  that]  a  more  speedy  answer  was  not  returned. 


$?f      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

You  are  mistaken  in  supposing  that  'you  are  not  favorably  known 
to  me.  *  On  the  contrary,  all  that  I  have  read  from  your  pen,  has 
inspired  me  with  a  high  idea  of  your  power,  and  I  think  you  are 
destined  to  stand  among  the  first  romance-writers  of  the  country, 
if  such  be  your  aim. 

Very  truly  yours, 

Poe's  answer  to  this  is  among  those  included  in  Har 
rison's  "Letters  of  Poe."  The  context  of  this  Poe  letter 
makes  it  evident  that  Poe  had  written  Longfellow  re 
questing  contributions  to  "Graham's".  Although  this 
paragraph  containing  Longfellow's  declination  must  have 
been  destroyed  by  this  autograph  vandal,  the  remaining 
portion  is  interesting  because  it  shows  mutual  apprecia 
tion.  Longfellow's  commendation  of  Poe's  stories,  ignoring 
his  poems  at  this  time  equally  well  known,  might  have  been 
the  origin  of  the  "Longfellow  War." 

Another  equally  strange  vagary  was  a  judgment  on  a 
poet  and  a  poem,  which  is  so  singularly  absurd  that  it  could 
not  have  emanated  from  a  rational  brain.  Neither  the  poem 
nor  the  poet  ever  would  have  been  resurrected  had  it  not 
been  for  Poe's  eloquent  and  sincere  eulogium.  The  poet's 
name  was  Home,  and  the  poem  was  called  "Orion."  Poe 
wrote  a  criticism  containing  the  following  appreciation : 

It  is  our  deliberate  opinion  that,  in  all  that  regards  the  loftiest  and 
holiest  attributes  of  true  poetry,  Orion  has  never  been  excelled.  Indeed 
we  feel  strongly  inclined  to  say  that  it  has  never  been  equalled. 

Comparing  it  to  Milton's  description  of  hell,  Poe  says 
that  Milton  is : 

Altogether  inferior  in  graphic  effect,  in  originality,  in  expression, 
in  the  true  imagination.  'Orion'  will  be  admitted  by  every  man  of 
genius  to  be  one  of  the  noblest,  if  not  the  very  noblest  poetical  work  of 
the  age. 

Spurred  to  investigation  by  so  ardent  and  so  laudatory 
a  critique,  and  possibly  abashed  by  the  fact  that  I  never 
even  had  heard  of,  much  less  read,  this  poem  that  out- 
Miltoned  Milton — supposing  that  nothing  more  dull 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        53 

had  ever  been  written — I  eagerly  searched  for  some  trace 
of  either  the  book  or  the  author,  but  they  seemed  to  be 
equally  dead.  Only  Captain  Brown's  "Conchology"  fur 
nished  me  with  a  keener  chase.  Finally  the  book-hunt  was 
successful,  and  I  found  the  long-sought  item : — not  only 
found  it,  but  in  its  original  state  autographed  and  in 
scribed  to  Douglas  Jerrold ;  and,  as  an  added  indication  of 
the  author's  capacity  and  literary  acumen,  there  was 
printed,  on  the  title  page,  the  announcement  "PRICE 
ONE  FARTHING."  Evidently  Home  was  no  profiteer,  yet  he 
probably  asked  all  that  it  was  worth.  The  volume  was  un 
cut  and  apparently  unopened ;  certainly  it  remains  unread. 
From  the  few  passages  which  I  scanned,  I  am  certain 
that  in  one  sense  Poe's  comparison  was  just,  in  spite  of  his 
mistaken  judgment.  It  is  said  that  this  price  of  one  far 
thing  was  placed  on  it  by  Home,  in  derision  of  the  slight 
value  in  which  epic  poetry  was  held.  The  price,  not  the 
value,  has  greatly  increased. 

Possibly  the  particular  passage  selected  by  Poe  that 
rivaled  the  God-like  fight  between  the  Devils  and  Angels 
is  this : 

Them,  quickly  joined 

Their  head  in  this  destruction,  and  ere  night, 
Huge  forms,  ferocious,  mighty  in  the  dawn, 
When  hoar  rime  glistened  on  each  hairy  shape, 
Nought  fearing,  swift,  brimful  of  raging  life, 
Lay  stiffening  in  black  pools  of  jellied  gore. 
Nor  with  the  day  ceased  their  tremendous  task, 
But  all  night  long  Orion  led  the  way 
Through  moonless  passes  to  most  secret  lairs, 
Where  in  their  deep  abodes  fierce  monsters  crouched, — 
Dragons  and  sea-beasts  and  compounded  forms, — 
And  in  the  pitchy  blackness  madly  huddling, 
Midst  deafening  yells  and  hisses  they  were  slain. 

This  is  not  by  any  means  the  worst.  I  select  at  random : 
Never  renew  thy  vision,  passionate  lover — 
Heart-rifled  maiden — nor  the  hope  pursue, 


54        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

If  once  it  vanish  from  thee;  but  believe, 

Tis  better  thou  should'st  rue  this  sweet  loss  ever 

Than  newly  grieve,  or  risk  another  chill 

On  false  love's  icy  river,  which  betraying 

With  mirrors  bright  to  see,  and  voids  beneath, 

Its  broken  spell  should  find  no  faith  in  thee. 

A  normal  Poe  was  too  capable  a  critic  to  have  passed 
such  judgment.  He  had  no  reason  for  giving  this  favorable 
opinion  had  he  not  believed  that  it  was  deserved.  His  judg 
ment  must  have  been  perverted. 

The  relationship,  begun  so  happily  between  Poe  and 
Briggs  lasted  only  a  few  months.  There  were  disagreements 
between  Briggs  and  his  publishers,  probably  owing  to  the 
circumstance  that  the  "Journal"  did  not  pay  expenses, 
and  in  July,  1845,  Poe  assumed  the  editorship. 

According  to  Briggs : 

Poe  got  on  a  drunken  spree,  and  conceived  the  idea  that  I  had  not 
treated  him  well,  for  which  he  had  no  other  grounds  than  my  having 
loaned  him  money  and  persuaded  Brisco  to  carry  on  The  Journal' 
himself. 

While  this  may  be  true,  as  between  Briggs  and  Poe 
Brisco  preferred  Poe.  After  a  week's  suspension,  "The 
Broadway  Journal''  reappeared  with  Poe  as  sole  editor. 
Poe's  life-time  ambition  was  realized,  and  the  goal  was 
reached  for  which  so  long  he  had  striven.  Unfortunately 
success  came  too  late. 

Although  Poe  tried  hard  for  his  ideal  and  attempted  to 
fashion  "The  Broadway  Journal"  into  the  arbiter  of  mat 
ters  literary,  and  make  it  the  critical  authority  of  which 
he  was  at  one  time  capable,  his  mental  deterioration  had 
progressed  to  such  an  extent  that  he  was  no  longer  able 
either  to  produce  original  work  or  to  judge  fairly  the 
work  of  others.  "The  Journal"  under  his  management,  re 
produced  many  of  his  stories  and  a  few  of  his  poems,  but 
his  reviews  apparently  had  lost  much  of  their  critical 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        55 

value ;  as  in  the  case  of  the  Longfellow  war,  which  he  con 
tinued  as  long  as  he  could  find  anyone  to  reply  to  him, 
they  showed  bias. 

Neither  mentally,  nor  temperamentally,  was  Poe  fitted 
for  a  Poet  Laureate.  He  could  not  write  on  command  and, 
with  him,  a  poem  was  a  matter  of  inspiration.  It  was  not 
in  a  spirit  of  derision  that  he  read  Al  Aaraaf  before 
a  Boston  audience,  when  requested  to  write  a  new  poem  for 
this  occasion.  He  attempted  one  and  failed.  To  him  com 
position  came  slowly  and  the  poems  that  make  his  name 
known  to  us  were  the  result  of  some  inner  fire  and  un- 
discoverable  compulsion  that  precipitated  into  being  an 
immortal  melody.  As  a  rule  the  conception  was  immacu 
late  ;  only  occasionally  could  the  inception  be  traced  and 
normal  gestation  be  demonstrated.  It  was  with  full 
realization  that  Poe  asserted:  "To  coin  one's  brain  into 
silver,  at  the  nod  of  a  master,  is  to  my  thinking  the 
hardest  task  in  the  world."  During  the  last  four  years  of 
his  life  he  produced  little  that  has  added  to  his  reputation. 
One  poem  Tne  Bells  was  slowly  elaborated  and  two,  most 
remarkable  for  their  inspirational  and  melodic  cadences, 
Ulalume  and  Annabel  Lee,  were  published  but  when  they 
were  written,  or  how  long  they  had  remained  unpublished, 
we  do  not  know. 

It  is  apparent  that  Poe's  poetic  faculty  remained,  and 
his  mastery  of  words  and  rhythm  lasted  beyond  his  logical 
faculties.  In  writing  to  Evert  A.  Duyckinck  in  November, 
1845,  he  said: 

For  the  first  time  during  two  months,  I  find  myself  entirely  my 
self — dreadfully  sick  and  depressed  but  still  myself.  I  seem  to  have 
wakened  from  some  horrible  dream,  in  which  all  was  confusion  and 
suffering.  I  really  believe  I  have  been  mad — but  indeed  I  had  abun 
dant  reason  to  be  so. 

It  was  during  this  time  that  Poe  had  the  memorable  in 
terview  with  Lowell,  and,  in  spite  of  the  kindly  feeling  their 


56        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

long  correspondence  had  engendered,  each  seems  to  have 
been  disappointed  in  the  other.  Lowell  later  wrote: 

I  saw  Poe  only  once  ...  I  suppose  there  are  many  descriptions 
of  him.  He  was  small :  his  complexion  of  what  I  should  call  a  clammy 
white;  fine,  dark  eyes,  and  fine  head,  very  broad  at  the  temples,  but 
receding  sharply  from  the  brows  backwards.  His  manner  was  rather 
formal,  even  pompous,  but  I  have  the  impression  that  he  was  rather 
soggy  with  drink — not  tipsy — but  as  if  he  had  been  holding  his  head 
under  a  pump  to  cool  it. 

It  is  probable  that  Poe%'s  facial  appearance  had  changed, 
as  the  result  of  alcoholic  poisoning,  and  that  he  was  not 
at  that  time  possessed  of  the  expression  of  nobility  that 
had  impressed  many  who  attempted  descriptions  of  him. 

And  Poe's  own  impression  of  Lowell  was  not  by  any 
means  flattering : 

He  called  to  see  me  the  other  day,  but  I  was  very  much  disap 
pointed  in  his  appearance  as  an  intellectual  man.  He  was  not  half  the 
noble  looking  man  that  I  expected  to  see. 

This  interview  is  also  referred  to  in  a  letter  Mrs.  Clemm 
wrote  Lowell  after  Poe's  death : 

How  much  I  wish  I  could  see  you!  how  quickly  I  could  remove 
your  wrong  impression  of  my  darling  Eddie !  The  day  you  saw  him  in 
New  York,  he  was  not  himself.  Do  you  not  remember  that  I  never  left 
the  room  ?  Oh !  if  you  only  knew  his  bitter  sorrow  when  I  told  him  how 
unlike  himself  he  was  while  you  were  here,  you  would  have  pitied  him ! 
He  always  felt  particularly  anxious  to  possess  your  approbation.  If  he 
spoke  unkindly  of  you  (as  you  say  he  did)  rely  on  it,  he  did  not  know 
what  he  was  talking. 

Willis  thus  pictures  Poe : 

He  becomes  a  desk, — his  beautiful  head  showing  like  a  statuary 
embodiment  of  Discrimination ;  his  accent  drops  like  a  knife  through 
water,  and  his  style  is  so  much  purer  and  clearer  than  the  pulpit  com 
monly  gets  or  requires  that  the  effect  of  what  he  says,  besides  other 
things,  pampers  the  ears. 

While  Willis  mixes  his  metaphors  and  his  similes  are 
crude,  what  he  means  to  express  is  a  remarkable  tribute 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        57 

for  one  writer  to  pay  another,  especially  when  that  other 
is  a  close  acquaintance. 
Another  familiar  thus  describes  him: 

The  exquisitely  chiseled  features,  the  habitual  but  intellectual 
melancholy,  the  clear  pallor  of  the  complexion,  and  the  calm  eye  like 
the  molten  stillness  of  a  slumbering  volcano,  composed  a  countenance 
of  which  this  portrait  is  but  the  skeleton. 

There  must  have  been  some  ground  for  these  eulogies. 

In  October,  1845,  Poe  assumed  full  charge  of  "The 
Broadway  Journal",  and  it  was  in  November  of  the 
same  year  that  he  wrote  the  letter  to  Duyckinck. 

In  January,  1846,  the  following  notice  announced  the 
close  of  his  last  effort.  It  was  the  end. 

VALEDICTORY 

Unexpected  engagements  demanding  my  whole  attention,  and  the 
objects  being  fulfilled,  so  far  as  regards  myself  personally,  for  which 
The  Broadway  Journal'  was  established,  I  now,  as  its  editor,  bid 
farewell — as  cordially  to  foes  as  to  friends. 

EDGAR  A.  POE. 

Only  those  who,  in  their  old  age,  have  experienced 
failure,  knowing  that  their  last  opportunity  as  well  as 
their  capacity  for  work  has  passed,  can  comprehend  to  the 
full  the  heartbreak  in  these  stereotyped  phrases. 

This  was  Poe's  last  attempt  to  do  serious  work  worthy 
of  his  genius.  For  the  next  four  years,  till  death  mercifully 
freed  him,  his  life  was  one  unbroken  series  of  disasters.  It 
was  at  this  time  that  his  wife's  sickness  gave  evidence  of 
her  fast  approaching  end,  and  penury  pinched  him  so  hard 
that  even  his  poor  mother  was  compelled  to  ask  for  assist 
ance.  That  there  was  abject  poverty — want  beyond  human 
endurance — is  evident  from  the  reports  of  those  who  visited 
Fordham  at  that  time. 

The  cottage  had  an  air  of  gentility  and  neatness  that  must  have 
been  lent  to  it  by  the  presence  of  its  inmates.  So  neat,  so  poor,  so  un- 


58        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

furnished,  and  yet  so  charming  a  dwelling  I  never  saw.  The  floor  of  the 
kitchen  was  white  as  wheaten  flour.  A  table,  a  chair,  and  a  little  stove 
that  it  contained  seemed  to  furnish  it  completely. 

Another  visitor,  describing  this  home,  thus  pictures 
Mrs.  Poe: 

I  saw  her  in  her  bed-chamber.  Everything  here  was  so  neat,  so 
purely  clean,  so  scant  and  poverty  stricken,  that  I  saw  the  poor  suf 
ferer  with  such  a  heartache  as  the  poor  feel  for  the  poor.  There  was  no 
clothing  on  the  bed,  which  was  of  straw,  but  a  snow-white  counterpane 
and  sheets.  The  weather  was  cold  and  the  sick  lady  had  the  dreadful 
chills  that  accompany  the  hectic  fever  of  consumption.  She  lay  on  her 
straw  bed,  wrapped  in  her  husband's  great-coat,  with  a  large  tortoise 
cat  in  her  bosom.  The  wonderful  cat  seemed  conscious  of  her  great  use 
fulness.  The  coat  and  the  cat  were  the  only  means  of  warmth  of  the 
poor  sufferer,  except  as  the  husband  held  her  hands,  and  her  mother 
her  feet. 

Friends  of  Poe  made  a  public  appeal  and  money  was 
raised  to  tide  over  the  threatened  starvation.  Only  a 
knowledge  of  Poe's  sensitive  nature  and  high-strung  spirit 
could  make  us  know  the  humiliation  he  must  have  suffered 
because  of  this  public  appeal ;  yet  it  was  to  this  Griswold 
sneeringly  alluded  when,  quoting  a  letter  Poe  wrote  Willis 
in  which  he  protested  against  "the  concerns  of  my  family 
being  thus  pitilessly  thrust  before  the  public,"  he  said  in 
his  memoir : 

This  was  written  for  effect.  He  had  not  been  ill  a  great  while  nor 
dangerously  at  all. 

Fortunately  Poe  was  for  many  weeks  too  sick  to  protest, 
and  his  friends  were  allowed  to  care  for  him. 

It  is  certain  that  there  were  a  few  occasions  when  Poe 
gave  striking  evidence  of  his  disturbed  mental  state,  that 
was  plain  to  all  his  intimate  associates.  His  friend  Willis 
says: 

He  left  us  [The  Mirror']  by  his  own  wish  alone,  and  it  was  one 
day  soon  after,  that  we  saw  him  in  the  condition  to  which  we  refer.  He 
came  into  our  office  with  his  usual  gait  and  manner,  and,  with  no 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        59 

symptom  of  ordinary  intoxication,  he  talked  like  a  man  insane.  Per 
fectly  self-possessed  in  all  other  respects,  his  brain  and  tongue  were 
evidently  beyond  his  control.  We  learned  afterward  that  the  least 
stimulus — a  single  glass  of  wine — would  produce  this  effect  on  Mr.  Poe 
and  that  rarely  as  these  instances  of  easy  aberration  of  caution  and 
mind  occurred,  he  was  liable  to  them,  and  while  under  their  influence, 
voluble  and  personally  self -possessed  but  neither  sane  nor  responsible. 

This  change  in  Poe,  the  so-called  double  personality,  is 
variously  explained,  for  it  is  not  necessarily  caused  by 
alcohol.  In  some  way  not  understood  the  subconscious 
self  is  involved  and,  by  reason  of  a  morbid  change,  dom 
inates.  Beyond  a  certain  point  it  becomes  a  pathological 
change,  and  one  suffering  from  it  cannot  be  held  respon 
sible.  The  nervous  diathesis  is  usually  present  as  the  basis 
of  this  mental  complex. 

Mrs.  Shew,  his  friend  and  his  nurse,  kept  a  diary  from 
which  John  H.  Ingram  made  the  following  extract: 

I  made  my  diagnosis,  and  went  to  the  great  Dr.  Mott  with  it;  I 
told  him  that  at  best,  when  Mr.  Poe  was  well,  his  pulse  beat  only  ten 
regular  beats,  after  which  it  suspended,  or  intermitted  (as doctors  say). 
I  decided  that  in  his  best  health  he  had  lesion  of  one  side  of  the  brain, 
and  as  he  could  not  bear  stimulants  or  tonics,  without  producing  in 
sanity,  I  did  not  feel  much  hope  that  he  could  be  raised  up  from  brain 
fever  brought  on  by  extreme  suffering  of  mind  and  body. 

Mrs.  Shew  again  states  that  on  Poe's  failing  to  return 
home,  they  found  that  he  had  taken  a  room  and  slept  for 
twelve  hours ;  and  that,  on  awakening,  he  had  little  or  no 
memory  of  what  had  taken  place  during  this  period. 
Again  she  deduces  the  medical  opinion : 

This  showed  that  his  mind  was  injured,  nearly  gone  out  for  the 
want  of  food  and  from  disappointment.  He  had  not  been  drinking,  and 
had  been  only  a  few  hours  from  home.  Evidently  his  vitality  was  low 
and  he  was  nearly  insane.  While  he  slept  we  studied  his  pulse,  and 
found  the  same  symptoms  we  had  noticed  before.  I  called  in  Dr. 
Francis  (the  old  man  was  odd  but  very  skillful)  who  was  one  of  our 
neighbors.  His  words  were,  'He  has  heart  disease  and  will  die  early  in 
life.' 


60        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

Mrs.  Shew  is  said  to  have  been  "the  only  daughter  of  a 
Doctor,"  and  that  "at  one  time  she  had  studied  medicine," 
for  which  reasons  her  medical  opinion  has  been  received 
as  worthy  of  respect.  While  fully  recognizing  the  value 
of  heredity  in  this  particular  matter,  and  that  remarkable 
understanding  of  diseased  conditions  that  the  mere  en 
trance  to  our  Medical  Colleges  gives,  nevertheless  I  ques 
tion  this  particular  diagnosis  of  Mrs.  Shew — even  that  of 
Dr.  Francis  and  Dr.  Mott ;  for  little  as  we  now  know,  still 
less  dependence  can  be  placed  on  the  pathological  findings 
of  those  days,  when  Dr.  Rush's  classical  work,  "Medical 
Inquiries  and  Observations  on  the  Diseases  of  the  Mind," 
remained  their  text  book  and  their  neurological  guide. 
Since  those  days  we  have  unlearned  very  much. 

However,  there  can  be  no  question  of  serious  mental 
aberration  and  that,  at  times,  Poe  was  not  responsible 
for  either  his  actions  or  his  statements.  It  is  certain  that  at 
least  a  few  of  Griswold's  charges  as  to  acts  committed  at 
that  time  had  a  real  foundation.  They  were  of  so  serious  a 
nature,  and  were  so  unlike  the  normal  Poe,  that  they  must 
be  regarded  as  the  offspring  of  a  disordered  brain.  It  was 
at  this  time  that  the  association  of  the  names  of  many 
women  with  that  of  Poe  showed  the  abnormal  trend  of  his 
mind. 

These  complications  were  of  such  a  nature,  and  so  unlike 
Poe  while  in  his  ordinary  health,  that  he  must  be  held 
irresponsible.  Griswold  added  blackmail  and  personal  dis 
honor  to  his  other  charges,  but  neither  of  these  can  be 
proved.  Griswold  stated  that  Poe  had  received  letters 
from  a  woman  containing  sentimental  passages,  and  that 
he  had  demanded  money  for  their  return.  It  is  not  neces 
sary  to  go  into  details  further  than  to  say  that  Poe  ap 
parently  received  such  letters  and,  when  this  woman  unduly 
interfered  and  publicly  criticised  the  good  name  of  another, 
he  bitterly  resented  it  and  did  refer  to  letters  that  he  had 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        61 

received  which  might  throw  some  light  on  this  woman's 
reason  for  attempting  to  besmirch  another. 

Poe  not  only  denied  that  he  ever  demanded  money,  but 
declared  that  he  had  long  ago  returned  all  the  letters  he 
had  not  destroyed.  When  this  story,  among  others,  was 
published  by  Thomas  Dunn  English,  Poe  brought  suit  and 
obtained  financial  damages ;  yet,  after  Poe's  death,  Gris- 
wold  publicly  circulated  the  same  stories  in  the  memoir 
which  accompanied  Poe's  collected  writings. 

It  is  probable  that  Poe,  under  provocation,  did  say 
things  he  later  regretted,  and  that  he  committed  other  in 
discretions  which,  in  a  better  moment,  he  thus  extenuates : 

The  errors  and  frailties  which  I  deplore,  it  cannot  at  least  be  said 
that  I  was  the  coward  to  deny.  Never  even  have  I  made  the  attempt 
at  extenuating  a  weakness  which  is  (or,  by  the  blessing  of  God,  was) 
a  calamity,  although  those  who  did  not  know  me  intimately  had  little 
reason  to  regard  it  other  than  as  a  crime.  For  indeed,  had  the  pride  of 
my  family  permitted,  there  was  much — very  much — there  was  every 
thing  in  extenuation.  Perhaps  even,  there  was  a  time  at  which  it  might 
not  have  been  wrong  to  me  to  hint — what  by  the  testimony  of  Dr. 
Francis  and  other  medical  men  I  might  have  demonstrated,  had  the 
public  indeed  cared  for  the  demonstration — that  irregularities  so  pro 
foundly  lamented  were  the  effect  of  a  terrible  evil  rather  than  the 
cause.  And  now  let  me  thank  God  that  in  redemption  from  the  physi 
cal  ill,  I  have  forever  got  rid  of  the  moral. 

Among  other  explanations  advanced  as  possibly  ac 
counting  for  some  of  Poe's  irresponsible  acts,  epilepsy  has 
been  alleged.  The  possibility  of  its  existence  could  not 
have  been  suggested  by  anyone  even  remotely  familiar 
with  the  manifestations  of  this  disease.  While  it  may  ex 
hibit  itself  in  protean  forms,  no  type  known  could  have 
accounted  for  the  peculiarities  of  Poe's  sickness. 

The  characteristic  symptom,  and  the  one  symptom  that 
differentiates  epilepsy  from  hysteria  and  all  other  nervous 
seizures,  is  complete  loss  of  consciousness  during  the  at 
tack,  occasionally  for  considerable  periods  of  time. 


62        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

We  are  ignorant  of  the  causation  of  epilepsy,  as  we  are  of 
many  other  of  the  functional  neuroses — including  insanity 
— but  we  do  know  definitely  its  symptomatology,  in  spite 
of  the  many  forms  it  may  assume.  As  a  rule,  the  patient 
falls  as  if  he  had  received  a  blow  directly  upon  the  brain ; 
and  this  is  what  does  happen,  for  the  blood  rushes  in  and 
congests  the  meninges,  engorging  the  brain  and  producing 
profound  unconsciousness.  What  causes  this  nervous  ex 
plosion  we  do  not  know.  It  may  be  compared  to  the  dis 
charge  of  electricity  from  a  Leyden  jar.  This  at  best  is  a 
gross  comparison,  for  we  know  absolutely  nothing  of  the 
actual  manifestation  of  nervous  energy ;  nor  do  we  know 
how  the  external  afferent  irritations,  as  received  by  the 
special  senses,  are  changed  into  efferent  and  intelligent  brain 
conceptions  and  manifestations,  nor  how  our  brain  cells 
function  in  flashing  back  their  responsive  conceptions. 
Did  we  know,  there  would  not  be  so  many  theories.  We  do 
know  that  there  is  some  subtle  cell  change,  accompanied 
by  some  unknown  process  of  stimulation  of  these  centers 
of  the  five  special  senses  which,  in  the  case  of  epilepsy, 
usually  signals  the  coming  storm. 

In  addition  to  the  gross  manifestations  described,  the 
seizures,  although  of  the  same  character,  may  be  so  slight 
that  they  can  be  detected  by  one  who  is  a  close  observer 
only ;  yet,  that  they  belong  to  the  same  group  and  have 
the  same  underlying  cause,  is  established  by  an  abundance 
of  incontrovertible  evidence.  Epilepsy  may  manifest  itself 
in  many  forms.  Occasionally  a  patient  so  afflicted  will 
suddenly  perform  some  unexpected  or  objectionable  act, 
such  as  disrobing  in  a  public  place;  or,  to  use  the  classical 
illustration  frequently  cited  of  the  patient  that  rose  from 
the  dinner  table  and  carefully  nailed  the  beefsteak,  which 
had  been  placed  before  him,  to  the  wall  of  the  dining-room. 
These  persons  are  unconscious  of  their  acts  and  have  no 
memory  of  anything  that  occurred  during  the  seizure. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        63 

This  last  is  called  "larval"  epilepsy,  and  is  the  form  that 
was  said  to  have  afflicted  Poe.  It  is  impossible  to  qualify 
him  for  this  or  any  other  manifestation  of  epilepsy. 

There  is,  however,  a  characteristic  seizure  which  often 
complicates  chronic  alcoholism,  and  which  frequently  so 
closely  resembles  the  first  form  described,  technically 
called  grand  mal,  that  only  the  clinical  history  of  the  indi 
vidual  case  can  differentiate  it  from  functional  epilepsy.  In 
chronic  alcoholism  this  seizure  is  due  to  an  organic  cerebral 
disintegration  and  is  not  held  to  be  a  true  epilepsy.  As  far 
as  I  can  discover  in  the  morbid  life-history  of  Poe,  no  such 
attack  has  been  described,  nor  is  there  any  history  that 
would  point  to  any  form  of  epilepsy.  It  is  true  that  a 
state  of  amnesia,  or  blank-memory  period,  characterizes 
both  epilepsy  and  certain  forms  of  chronic  alcoholism ;  but 
no  intelligent  physician  could  possibly  confound  the  two 
causations.  Fairfield,  who  had  read  a  thesis  of  Dr.  Leblois 
dealing  with  the  petit  mal  and  other  larval  forms  of 
epilepsy,  imagined  he  saw  in  this  description  a  method  of 
accounting  for  Poe's  many  lapses, 

The  question  as  to  the  part  opium  played  in  producing 
these  temporary  derangements  frequently  has  been  asked 
and  may  be  answered  only  in  general  terms.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  Poe  occasionally  indulged  in  opium.  It  is  equally 
certain  that  this  use  never  became  a  "habit,"  or  that  it 
had  to  be  continued  in  frequent  and  always  increasing 
doses,  such  as  an  addict  requires.  It  is  a  part  of  the  his 
tory  of  dipsomania  that  when  the  unutterable  depression, 
which  is  one  of  its  phases,  does  supervene,  opium  will  fre 
quently  be  selected  in  preference  to  alcohol.  This  is  only  a 
temporary  remedy  and  alcohol  becomes  the  final  solace. 

I  cannot  recall  a  patient  who  was  a  typical  dipsomaniac, 
that  became  an  opium  addict,  although  he  might  use  opium 
between  attacks,  or  as  a  means  of  warding  off  a  threatened 
seizure.  A  cousin  who  visited  the  Poes,  and  who  became  a 


64        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

temporary  inmate  of  their  home,  describes  this  period  of 
Poe's  morbid  life.  She  is  quoted : 

He  then  frequently  refused  wine  in  her  presence,  and  adds  that  at 
that  time,  his  fits  of  intoxication  were  due  to  the  excessive  use  of 
opium. 

There  is  neither  direct  nor  presumptive  evidence  that 
Poe  was  addicted  to  opium,  though  he  did  occasionally  use 
this  drug. 

Dr.  English,  at  one  time  Poe's  friend  and  boon  com 
panion,  but  later  his  avowed  enemy,  testified : 

Had  Poe  the  opium  habit  when  I  knew  him,  I  should  both  as  a 
physician  and  a  man  of  observation,  have  discovered  it  during  his 
frequent  visits  to  my  rooms,  my  visits  to  his  house,  and  our  meetings 
elsewhere. 

Dr.  Carter,  who  was  intimate  with  Poe,  and  at  times 
treated  him  during  his  last  Richmond  visit,  wrote : 

He  never  used  opium  in  any  instance  that  I  am  aware  of.  Had  it 
been  habitual  it  would  have  been  detected,  as  the  poet  numbered 
among  his  associates  a  half  dozen  physicians.  I  never  heard  it  hinted 
at,  and  if  he  had  contracted  the  habit  it  would  have  accompanied  him 
to  Richmond. 

Poe,  in  a  letter  he  wrote  to  "Annie/'  gives  a  picture  of 
the  mental  torture  from  which  he  suffered,  and  his  method 
of  obtaining  relief : 

You  saw,  you  felt  the  agony  of  grief  with  which  I  bade  you  farewell 
— you  remember  my  expression  of  gloom — of  a  dreadful  horrible  fore 
boding  of  111.  Indeed — indeed  it  seemed  to  me  that  Death  approached 
me  even  then,  and  that  I  was  involved  in  the  shadow  that  went  before 
him.  ...  I  remember  nothing  distinctly  from  that  moment  till  I 
found  myself  in  Providence.  I  went  to  bed  and  wept  through  a  long, 
long,  hideous  night  of  despair.  When  the  day  broke  I  arose  and  en 
deavored  to  quiet  my  mind  by  a  rapid  walk  in  the  cold  keen  air,  but 
all  would  not  do — the  Demon  tortured  me  still.  Finally  I  procured  two 
ounces  of  laudanum,  and  without  returning  to  my  hotel,  took  the  cars 
back  to  Boston.  ...  I  implored  you  to  come  then,  mentioning  the 
place  where  I  should  be  found  in  Boston.  Having  written  this  letter  I 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY       65 

swallowed  about  half  the  laudanum,  and  hurried  to  the  post  office,  in 
tending  not  to  take  the  rest  till  I  saw  you — for  I  did  not  doubt  for  one 
moment  that  Annie  would  keep  her  sacred  promise.  But  I  had  not  cal 
culated  on  the  strength  of  the  laudanum  for  before  I  reached  the  post- 
office  my  reason  was  entirely  gone  and  the  letter  was  never  put  in.  Let 
me  pass  over — my  darling  sister — the  awful  horrors  which  succeeded. 
A  friend  was  at  hand  who  aided  me  (if  it  can  be  called  saving)  saved 
me,  but  it  is  only  the  last  three  days  that  I  have  been  able  to 
remember  what  occurred  in  that  dreary  interval.  It  appears  that  after 
the  laudanum  was  rejected  from  the  stomach  I  became  calm,  to  the 
casual  observer,  sane — so  that  I  was  suffered  to  go  back  to  Provi 
dence.  ...  I  am  so  ill — so  terribly,  hopelessly  ill  in  body  and  in 
mind,  that  I  feel  I  cannot  live.  .  .  .  Until  I  subdue  this  fearful 
agitation,  which  if  continued  will  destroy  my  life  or  drive  me  hope 
lessly  mad. 

Farewell — here  and  hereafter. 

This  letter  was  written  on  November  16,  1848,  a  year 
before  Poe's  death.  It  is  the  best  evidence  of  the  men 
tal  torture  that  overcame  Poe  during  these  frequently 
repeated  seizures,  and  it  also  shows  that,  when  so  afflicted, 
he  would  resort  to  any  drug  he  believed  would  give  him  re 
lief.  In  this  particular  case  it  is  to  be  presumed  that  Poe, 
believing  that  he  could  no  longer  bear  the  mental  pain  from 
which  he  suffered,  selected  opium  with  lethal  intent ;  that 
he  was  not  accustomed  to  its  use  and  was  not  familiar 
with  its  effect  is  made  evident  by  its  action  on  him. 

Had  he  been  a  confirmed  user  of  this  drug,  such  as 
DeQuincey  described  himself  to  be  when  he  "sipped  a  glass 
of  laudanum  negus  warm  and  without  sugar  "  it  would  not 
have  affected  him  so  seriously:  yet  any  statement  made 
either  by  DeQuincey,  or  by  any  other  drug  addict,  must  be 
taken  with  many  "grains"  of  allowance.  DeQuincey,  for  ex 
ample,  in  his  "Confessions,"  states  that  he  ordinarily  took 
8000  minims  of  laudanum  daily — an  amount  which  he  esti 
mates  to  contain  320  grains  of  opium — and  prides  himself 
on  his  ability  to  decrease  to  1000. 

A  tumbler  of  ordinary  size  holds  about  8  ounces ;  and,  as 


66        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

druggists  estimate  450  minims  to  the  ounce  of  laudanum, 
nearly  18  ounces,  or  more  than  two  glasses,  would  have 
constituted  his  daily  consumption. 

According  to  the  present  English  pharmacopoeia  the 
amount  of  opium  that  is  contained  in  laudanum  is  calcu 
lated  on  a  10%  basis:  in  an  ounce,  there  are  45  grains, 
or  in  8000  minims,  800  grains.  It  is  entirely  possible  that, 
at  the  time  DeQuincey  was  in  the  habit  of  using  this  drug, 
the  opium  content  might  have  been  somewhat  smaller; 
but,  as  far  as  I  can  ascertain,  this  was  never  so  low  as  4%. 
The  fact  not  realized  by  DeQuincey,  certainly  one  that  has 
not  been  mentioned  by  him  or  others,  was  the  enormous 
dosage  of  alcohol  daily  consumed.  Possibly  he  did  not 
know  the  constituents  of  laudanum  and,  for  this  reason, 
could  not  have  estimated  the  result.  To  manufacture 
laudanum  it  is  necessary  that  the  opium  be  infused  in  an 
alcoholic  mixture,  known  as  proof  spirits.  This  varies  in 
strength,  from  50%  to  65%  of  grain  alcohol.  Necessarily, 
with  the  opium,  18  ounces  of  proof  spirits  were  consumed. 

While  neither  of  these  amounts  is  impossible,  it  is  ex 
tremely  improbable  that  any  man,  especially  with  De 
Quincey  's  feeble  physique,  could  have  long  endured  this 
enormous  dosage  of  alcohol  and  opium. 

Many  other  statements  made  by  DeQuincey  as  to  the 
effect  of  opium  on  him  must  be  taken  with  equal  distrust. 
His  "visions,"  instead  of  having  had  their  origin  in  the 
use  of  opium,  were  the  result  of  an  overworked  imagination. 
They  could  not  have  been  a  part  of  the  drug-life  of  such 
a  patient.  A  careful  reading  of  his  autobiography  shows 
that  he  had  visions  long  preceding  his  use  of  opium. 

Possibly  DeQuincey  did  not  intend  that  all  of  his  state 
ments  should  be  taken  literally.  He  had  many  visionary 
dream-children  and  he  might  have  magnified  his  state 
ments  as  to  dosage,  as  is  frequently  the  case  with  addicts. 
He  was  given  visions  vouchsafed  to  few  other  mortals. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        67 

Poe  occasionally  used  opium  for  the  relief  of  mental 
pain.  He  was  not  an  addict,  and  he  did  not  use  opium  to 
induce  visions. 

When  the  opium  habit  becomes  established,  its  usage  is 
necessarily  continuous ;  and  the  dosage  in  all  cases  is  slowly 
increased,  though  the  patient,  recognizing  the  danger, 
makes  determined  and  intelligent  attempts  to  discontinue. 
Even  with  medical  aid,  recovery  is  difficult.  Patients  usually 
resort  to  this  drug  to  relieve  some  morbid  condition  or 
affliction.  DeQuincey  to  the  contrary,  I  have  never  known  a 
patient  to  use  opium  habitually  for  the  purpose  of  produc 
ing  hallucinatory  visions,  or  clearer  and  keener  mental  con 
cepts,  or  more  lucid  thought.  It  is  commonly  used  for  the 
purpose  of  inducing  what,  in  other  and  normal  individuals, 
is  a  sense  of  well-being.  It  is  not  possible  that  any  of  Poe's 
work,  whether  prose  or  poetry,  was  the  product  of  either 
opium  or  alcohol ;  nor  could  he  have  written  his  master 
pieces  while  under  the  influence  of  drugs.  No  man  can  per 
form  as  well  under  an  intoxicant  as  when  the  brain  is  clear. 
This  conclusion  is  the  result  of  elaborate  and  well-attested 
experiments,  conducted  on  men  following  different  voca 
tions  without  varying  the  well-established  law  that  while 
under  alcohol  they  may  do  things  more  boldly  and  more 
recklessly,  they  cannot  do  them  so  intelligently  or  accu 
rately,  or  even  so  rapidly  as  when  free  from  stimulants. 

However,  there  are  certain  hereditary  alcoholics  who 
require  stimulation  to  overcome  inherent  neurasthenic 
weaknesses  either  of  will  power  or  ability  to  properly  con 
centrate.  In  order  that  such  patients  may  appear  normal, 
they  must  overcome  these  inhibitions  by  such  stimulation 
as  apparently  restores  mental  tone.  In  these  cases  alcohol 
seems  to  stabilize  but  it  adds  nothing  to  their  capacity, 
except  the  confidence  that  they  never  posessed,  or 
that  they  have  lost  because  of  some  intercurrent 
neurosis. 


68        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

To  say  that  many  brilliant  men  have  indulged  to  excess 
and  in  spite  of  this  have  accomplished  wonderful  things,  is 
simply  to  confuse  the  morbid  ills,  which  frequently  accom 
pany  the  neurosis  of  hereditary  capacity,  with  that 
which  constitutes  their  excellence.  Kubla  Khan:  A  Vision 
may  have  come  in  sleep  as  Coleridge  describes,  but  this 
does  not  mean  that  this  Vision  was  the  result  of  an  opium 
dream.  Very  curious  things  occur  in  the  dream  state,  and 
the  result  of  the  brain's  unconscious  cerebration  is  one  of 
the  most  interesting  of  psychological  problems. 

Occasionally  it  happens  that  one,  seduced  by  the  antici 
pated  pleasure  he  will  derive  from  the  use  of  opium,  or 
urged  by  curiosity  to  explore  and  to  experience  the  effect 
of  this  forbidden  drug,  or  forced  into  its  use  because  of 
some  neurosis,  will  dare  its  dangers.  At  first  the  experi 
ence  is  pleasurable,  whatever  the  ultimate  pain  and  regret. 
Because  of  this  our  poets  sing  the  pleasures  of  opium : 

I  am  engulfed,  and  drown  deliciously. 

Soft  music  like  a  perfume,  and  sweet  light 

Golden  with  audible  odours  exquisite, 

Swathe  me  with  cerements  for  eternity. 

Time  is  no  more.  I  pause  and  yet  I  flee. 

A  million  ages  wrap  me  round  with  night. 

I  drain  a  million  ages  of  delight. 

I  hold  the  future  in  my  memory. 

Also  I  have  this  garret  which  I  rent, 
This  bed  of  straw,  and  this  that  was  a  chair, 
This  worn-out  body,  like  a  tattered  tent, 
This  crust,  of  which  the  rats  have  eaten  part, 
This  pipe  of  opium;  rage,  remorse,  despair; 
This  soul  at  pawn  and  this  delirious  heart. 

Poe's  power  of  analysis  and  ability  to  decipher  the  most 
difficult  cryptograms,  although  casually  mentioned  as  a 
curious  mental  recreation,  have  never  been  explained  nor 
has  it  received  the  full  consideration  that  the  possession  of 
such  a  faculty  deserves. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY       69 

There  is  a  class  of  defectives  medically  called  "Idiot 
Savant,"  who,  although  they  may  show  evidence  of  weak- 
mindedness  in  certain  directions,  in  others  exhibit  a  mar 
velous  development  of  brain  capacity.  Blind  Tom,  the 
musician,  who  could  at  will  recall  and  play  any  musical 
selection  he  had  heard,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  was 
mentally  so  feeble  that  he  could  not  receive  a  musical 
education,  is  an  excellent  example  of  this  mental  disorder. 
Occasionally  there  are  children,  known  as  lightning  calcu 
lators,  who  can  solve  the  most  complicated  sums  in  addi 
tion,  subtraction,  root  extraction  or  other  arithmetical 
examples,  yet  who  in  other  directions  show  mental  feeble 
ness.  It  is  an  accompaniment  of  either  precocity  or  sub- 
normality.  An  interesting  illustration  occurred  some  years 
ago  when  a  boy  of  twelve  was  admitted  to  one  of  our 
greatest  universities  as  a  mental  prodigy.  It  was  an 
nounced  that  this  marked  intellectual  superiority  was  the 
result  of  judicious  parental  effort,  and  that  any  child,  men 
tally  normal,  could  be  developed  with  equal  rapidity,  pro 
vided  wise  and  efficient  methods  were  adopted  in  early 
mental  training.  Apparently  no  one  recognized  this  as  a 
beginning  of  intellectual  abnormality  which  was  probably 
an  early  symptom  of  dementia  praecox. 

Only  very  occasionally  is  this  particular  faculty  re 
tained,  and,  as  the  brain  is  developed  and  age  opens  up 
new  fields  for  its  occupation,  the  power  is  gradually  lost. 
Macaulay,  Pope,  and  a  few  other  noted  writers  possessed 
this  faculty,  and  retained  it  without  developing  other 
manifestations  of  psychoneuroses. 

It  is  possible  that  this  abnormal  faculty,  which  Poe  did 
possess  to  such  an  unusual  degree,  was  more  or  less  con 
nected  with  his  marked  ability  to  select,  and  to  so  place 
words  as  to  embody  an  idea  or  picture  an  image  after  the 
method  of  the  untaught  artist,  who  occasionally  accom 
plished  what  no  school  can  teach. 


70        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

Poe's  poems  and  criticisms  could  not  have  been  evolved 
except  by  a  reasoning  brain  working  at  its  highest  point 
of  efficiency.  Had  it  not  been  clear,  it  could  no  more  have 
discerned  the  images  it  did  reflect  than  could  a  distorted 
mirror  accurately  reproduce  the  image  of  one  looking  into 
it.  I  refer  especially  to  Poe's  tales  of  Ratiocination  and  a 
certain  few  of  his  poems,  among  which  The  Raven  must 
be  mentioned,  although  it  may  not  have  been  written  by 
that  process  of  deduction  and  calculation  and  in  the  man 
ner  in  which  Poe  explained  that  he  conceived  and  built  it 
up.  And  possibly  it  was  composed  as  he  described.  On  the 
other  hand,  such  a  poem  as  Ulalume  might  have  been  for 
mulated  in  a  brain  which  was  somewhat  diseased,  but  whose 
capacity  for  rhythm  and  euphony  remained  unimpaired. 

It  is  impossible  that  a  brain  disordered  by  alcohol  could 
have  been  attuned  to  such  harmony.  An  inspired  song 
may  burst  forth  unpremeditated  and  fully  matured,  but 
such  inspiration  is  not  the  result  of  alcohol. 

We  know  the  genesis  of  one  of  these  poems.  We  have  a 
version  of  The  Bells  while  it  was  still  in  embryo.  In  its 
beginning  it  was  but  dimly  conceived,  and  it  was  painfully 
gestated  and  reached  its  final  state  of  perfection  only 
by  painstaking  elaboration.  While  it  is  true  that  Poe  had 
the  sense  of  rhythm  and  the  ability  so  to  arrange  euphon 
ious  words  and  phrases  as  to  produce  the  tintinabulation 
of  The  Bells  this  poem  did  not  come  forth  full  grown 
and  perfect  at  birth,  as  was  the  case  with  The  Raven. 

Probably  many  of  Poe's  other  poems  required  equal 
nurture  and  painstaking  gestation.  In  this  diseased  condi 
tion  his  brain  was  not  so  resilient,  or  was  it  so  readily  re 
sponsive  to  the  demands  made  upon  it ;  yet  his  sense  of 
euphony  remained  with  him  to  the  end. 

Poe  was  now  rapidly  approaching  the  "old  age"  to  which 
he  had  jokingly  alluded  in  his  preface  to  "Tamerlane." 
He  was  thirty-six;  yet  because  of  the  degeneration  in  the 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        71 

brain  cells  and  the  congested  and  thickened  meninges,  as 
well  as  by  reason  of  the  law  of  early  decay  that  always 
accompanies  precocity,  production,  such  as  had  charac 
terized  his  early  manhood,  was  no  longer  possible. 

Although  The  Raven  was  published  early  in  this  period 
of  mental  decadence,  and  still  later  there  had  appeared 
Ulalume,  The  Bells,  and  Annabel  Lee,  Poe's  capacity  for 
discriminating  and  sustained  work  was  passing.  To  a 
certain  extent  "Graham's"  and  noticeably  "The  Broadway 
Journal,"  were  padded  with  twice  and  thrice  told  tales,  not 
because  Poe  did  not  wish  to  furnish  fresh  material  but  be 
cause  he  could  not. 

From  this  time  his  work  showed  definite  abnormalities 
due  to  mental  change.  I  refer  especially  to  his  discussion  of 
the  cosmogony  of  the  universe,  which  he  dedicated  to 
Alexander  Von  Humboldt,  and  which  he  called  "Eureka" 
in  the  belief  that  he  had  solved  the  riddle  of  the  universe. 
Let  us  study  the  matter  of  this  work  as  well  as  the  manner. 

Poe  prefaces  it : 

To  the  few  who  love  me  and  whom  I  love — to  those  who  feel 
rather  than  to  those  who  think — to  the  dreamers  and  those  who  put 
faith  in  dreams  as  in  the  only  realities — I  offer  this  Book  of  Truths, 
not  in  its  character  of  Truth-Teller,  but  for  the  Beauty  that  abounds 
in  its  Truth ;  constituting  it  true.  To  these  I  present  the  composition  as 
an  Art-Product  alone : — let  us  say  as  a  Romance ;  or,  if  I  be  not  urging 
too  lofty  a  claim,  as  a  Poem.  What  I  here  profound  is  true: — therefore 
it  cannot  die : — or  if  by  any  means  it  be  now  trodden  down  so  that  it 
die,  it  will  'rise  again  to  the  Life  Everlasting.'  Nevertheless  it  is  as  a 
Poem  only  I  wish  this  work  to  be  judged  after  I  am  dead. 

E.  A.  P. 

It  is  related  of  him: 

During  the  last  years  of  his  unhappy  life,  whenever  he  yielded  to 
the  temptation  that  was  drawing  him  to  the  fathomless  abyss,  as  with 
the  resistless  swirl  of  the  maelstrom,  he  always  lost  himself  in  sublime 
rhapsodies  of  the  evolution  of  the  universe,  speaking  as  if  from  some 
imaginary  platform  to  a  vast  audience  of  rapt  and  attentive  listeners. 


72        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

Harrison  considers  it 

an  astounding  circumstance  that  a  mind  so  apparently  wrecked  as 
Poe's  was  all  through  the  weary  months  of  1847 — months  hyphened 
together  by  unalterable  gloom  from  the  death  of  Virginia,  in  January, 
to  the  apparition  on  the  December  horizon  of  the  fantastic  flame  of 
Ulalume — could  have  recovered  vitality  or  even  vivacity  enough  to 
meditate  on  the  deep  themes  of  Eureka,  of  the  cosmogony  of  the  Uni 
verse,  of  the  destiny  of  the  human  soul  and  the  fate  of  the  circum 
ambient  matter;  but  so  it  was. 

Poe's  argumentative  faculty  attained  perhaps  its  highest  expres 
sion  in  Eureka;  the  theme,  in  itself  so  abstract,  so  transcendental, 
burns  and  glows  with  a  concrete  radiance  that  seems  to  convince  the 
reader  that  it  is  the  true  light,  and  not  quagmire  phosphorescence ; 
the  suppleness  of  the  Poet's  tongue  never  abandons  him  as  he  climbs 
the  empyrean  in  his  Excelsior  flights  and  forces  one  stronghold  after 
another  of  retreating  Deity,  talking  volubly  of  Newton,  Kepler,  and 
La  Place  the  while,  until  at  last  Eureka!  bursts  from  his  lips  and  he 
fancies  he  has  found  t.he  Eternal. 

Having  worked  the  book  out  through  the  long  and  hollow  hours  of 
1847 — he  was  ready  with  it  as  a  lecture  in  the  early  months  of  1848. 
His  hope  was  to  rent  a  hall  and  secure  an  audience  of  three  or  four 
hundred  persons  who  would  pay  him  sufficiently  to  start  on  a  lecturing 
tour  in  the  interests  of  the  'Stylus' — which  now  again  sweeps  up  to  the 
surface  like  the  drowned  face  of  Delacroix's  maiden.  Instead  of  three 
or  four  hundred,  sixty  persons  assembled  in  the  hall  of  the  Society  Li 
brary,  New  York,  and  shivered  through  three  hours  of  a  bleak  Febru 
ary  night,  listening,  as  one  of  them  reported,  'to  a  rhapsody  of  the 
most  intense  brilliancy.'  Poe  appeared  inspired,  and  his  inspiration 
affected  the  scant  audience  almost  painfully.  His  eyes  seemed  to  glow 
like  those  of  his  own  Raven.  .  .  .  Not  disheartened  at  his  poor  success 
nor  at  the  absurdly  caricatured  accounts  of  the  lecture  in  the  public 
prints,  Poe  went  bravely  to  work  and  wrote  out  the  theory  in  book 
form,  offering  it,  with  flashing  eyes  and  exuberant  enthusiasm  to  Mr. 
Putnam.  ...  He  suggested  an  edition  of  50,000;  Mr.  Putnam  lis 
tened  attentively,  and  ventured  on  an  edition  of  500. 

The  mere  fact  that  Poe  left  the  field  of  literature  to  un 
dertake  scientific  researches,  or  that  he  believed  he  had 
established  a  new  theory  of  the  universe  is  not,  of  itself, 
evidence  of  an  unsound  mind ;  nor  do  extravagant  and  ill 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        73 

understood  deductions  necessarily  indicate  a  developing 
mental  disease.  It  is  something  often  experienced  that, 
among  normal  men,  dissatisfaction  arises  with  their  occu 
pation  or  profession,  even  when  success  has  attended  their 
efforts,  and  that  many  literary  and  scientific  men  reach  forth 
into  new  and  strange  domains.  Goethe  was  not  satisfied 
with  his  great  poetical  reputation,  but  insisted  on  being 
regarded  as  a  man  of  science:  he  wrote  a  book — "Farben- 
lehre" — in  an  effort  to  disprove  Newton's  *  Theory  of  Col 
ors."  This  book  demonstrated  that  he  was  not  familiar 
with  the  elementary  principles  of  light,  and  because  of  his 
theory  he  was  derided  for  his  scientific  pretensions,  although 
his  researches  in  comparative  anatomy,  in  conjunction  with 
Oken,  had  demonstrated  that  the  cranium  was  composed 
of  consolidated  vertebrae,  and  thus  scientifically  estab 
lished  brain  evolution  from  original  spinal  centers. 

Cruikshank,  in  his  old  age,  was  vociferous  in  asserting 
his  right  to  be  considered  the  author  of  * 'Oliver  Twist," 
because  he  had  suggested  to  Dickens  certain  illustrations 
for  that  work :  his  great  reputation  as  a  caricaturist  did  not 
satisfy  him.  Even  Tennyson  made  a  failure  of  * 'Queen 
Mary"  and  other  attempts  at  dramatic  composition,  a 
form  in  which,  it  is  said,  he  believed  that  he  excelled; 
and  Longfellow  committed  the  unpardonable  sin  of  writ 
ing  "Kavanagh." 

George  Eliot's,  Emerson's,  and  Lowell's  essays  in  the 
field  of  poetry  are  sad  commentaries  on  their  ability  to 
judge  of  their  limitations.  None  of  these  should  be  harshly 
criticized  because  he  failed  to  estimate  properly  his  own 
individual  capacity. 

Nor  can  all  enthusiasts  be  classed  among  the  abnormal, 
even  if  they  go  to  the  extent  of  dwelling  unduly  on  some 
abstruse  problem,  or  attempting  to  solve  some  riddle  that 
is  regarded  as  unsolvable.  Men  perfectly  sane  have  at 
tempted  to  square  the  circle,  and  many  perpetual  motion 


74        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

machines  are  now  attic  ornaments.  Men  such  as  those 
that  sought  a  secret  that  would  give  them  everlasting  life 
are  now  devoting  their  superabundant  energy  to  newer 
fads,  and  are  devotees  of  some  recent  cult.  There  are  too 
many  Scientists,  such  as  Lodge,  Conan  Doyle  and  others 
of  the  faddists,  for  us  to  be  able  to  draw  a  distinct 
line  between  those  merely  credulous  and  the  mentally 
unsound;  and  there  are  too  many  pretenders  in  medical, 
astronomical  and  the  physical  sciences  for  us  to  say  who 
is  the  Great  Discoverer  and  who  is  the  self-deceived. 
Knowledge  is,  at  best,  a  chimera :  and  all  who  seek  must 
base  their  findings  on  a  theory  that  future  investigators 
are  sure  to  question.  Some  Einstein  may  yet  upset  our 
most  definitely  established  natural  laws. 

That  we  may  only  approximate  knowledge  of  the  Su 
preme  Cause  need  not  make  us  reject  all  guesses ;  nor,  with 
Bacon,  put  the  jeering  question  in  the  mouth  of  the  smiling 
Pilate.  Philosophers  have  long  sought  the  key-stone  of 
some  definite  Truth  by  which  to  support  their  contentions ; 
but,  thus  far,  none  has  been  found. 

Although  such  speculations  as  engaged  the  attention  of 
Poe  need  not  arouse  suspicion  as  to  the  soundness  of  his 
mind,  they  were  the  forerunner  of  other  and  more  serious 
vagaries.  Had  he,  even  in  these  last  few  years  when  he 
seemed  most  normal,  been  aroused  by  an  inquiry  as  to  cos 
mogony,  again  would  his  eyes  have  flashed,  his  congested 
brain  would  have  become  turgid  with  blood,  and  there 
might  have  come  a  morbid  mental  reaction  as  pronounced 
as  the  "single  glass"  could  have  produced.  Poe's  power  of 
definitely  expressing  his  thoughts  might  have  been  swept 
away  by  the  vehemence  of  his  utterance,  appearing  con 
fused  only  because  of  the  torrent  of  his  ideas. 

For  this  reason  the  apparent  incoherence  would  have 
been  only  an  evidence  of  over-active  brain  functioning. 
Woodberry,  in  his  "Notes,"  gives  several  examples  of  this 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        75 

condition  occurring  in  the  last  few  months  of  Poe's  life, 
when  he  recited  for  bar-room  roysterers  his  own  and  other 
notable  poems.  It  was  not  a  hectoring  drunkard  engaged 
in  saloon  brawls,  haranguing  a  throng  of  grinning  auditors : 
it  was  an  organically  brain-diseased  patient,  whose  friends 
did  not  realize  the  necessity  of  permanently  secluding  him. 
Most  emphatically  it  was  not  a  moral  lapse,  nor  the  result 
of  vicious  living;  nor  should  his  life  be  cited  as  4'full  of  in 
struction  and  warning/'  nor  should  he  pay  "the  penalty  of 
wrong  doing  that  its  anatomy  should  be  displayed  for  the 
common  study  and  advantage." 

Poe  was  not  a  man  of  scientific  training,  nor  was  he  a 
classical  scholar,  in  spite  of  the  display  of  both  scientific 
and  classical  knowledge  in  much  that  he  wrote. 

When  he  fathered  Brown's  "Conchology"  it  was  not  for 
scientific  reasons,  but  in  the  preparation  of  ''Eureka"  he 
was  deadly  in  earnest ;  and  while  neither  the  matter  nor  the 
effort  arouses  suspicion,  yet  the  manner  and  the  circum 
stances  under  which  it  was  produced  are  the  best  evidence 
that  it  was  the  result  of  a  disordered  brain.  It  was  at  this 
time  that  Harrison  thus  described  his  condition : 

He  found  it  impossible  to  sleep  without  the  presence  of  some 
friend  by  his  bedside.  Mrs.  Clemm,  his  ever  devoted  friend  and  com 
forter,  more  frequently  fulfilled  the  office  of  watcher.  The  poet,  after 
retiring,  would  summon  her,  and  while  she  stroked  his  broad  brow,  he 
would  indulge  his  wild  flights  of  fancy  to  the  Aidenn  of  his  dreams.  He 
never  spoke  nor  moved  in  these  moments,  unless  the  hand  was  with 
drawn  from  his  forehead;  then  he  would  say,  with  childish  naivete, 
'No,  no,  not  yet !' — while  he  lay  with  half-closed  eyes. 

Woodberry  reports  a  statement  of  Mrs.  Clemm: 

He  never  liked  to  be  alone,  and  I  used  to  sit  up  with  him,  often  till 
four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  he  at  his  desk,  writing,  and  I  dozing  in  my 
chair.  When  he  was  composing  Eureka,  we  used  to  walk  up  and  down 
the  garden,  his  arm  around  me,  mine  around  him,  until  I  was  so  tired  I 
could  not  walk.  He  would  stop  every  few  minutes  and  explain  his  ideas 
to  me,  and  ask  if  I  understood  him. 


76        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

It  is  interesting  to  read  the  criticisms  made  by  com 
mentators  on  the  theories  contained  in  this  book. 

Griswold  believed : 

To  the  composition  of  Eureka  he  brought  his  subtlest  and  highest 
capacities,  in  their  most  perfect  development. 

Denying  that  the  Arcana  of  the  Universe  can  be  explored  by  induc 
tion,  but  informing  his  imagination  with  the  various  results  of 
science,  he  entered  with  unhesitating  boldness,  though  with  no  guide 
but  the  divinest  instinct, — into  the  sea  of  speculation,  and  there 
built  up  of  according  laws  and  their  phenomena,  as  under  the  influence 
of  a  scientific  inspiration,  his  theory  of  Nature.  .  .  .  When  I  read 
Eureka  I  could  not  help  but  think  it  immeasurably  superior  as  an 
illustration  of  genius  to  the  'Vestiges  of  Creation;'  and  as  I  admired 
the  poem  so  I  regretted  its  pantheism,  which  is  not  necessary  to  its 
main  design. 

Mrs.  Whitman  in  her  "Defense  of  Poe"  made  the  follow 
ing  comment : 

The  unrest  and  faithlessness  of  the  age  culminated  in  him. 
Nothing  so  solitary,  nothing  so  hopeless,  nothing  so  desolate  as  his 
spirit  in  its  darker  moods  has  been  instanced  in  the  literary  history  of 
the  nineteenth  century. 

It  has  been  said  that  this  theory,  as  expressed  in  Eureka  of  the 
universal  diffusion  of  Deity  in  and  through  all  things,  is  identical  with 
the  Brahminical  faith  as  expressed  in  the  Bagvat  Gita.  But  those  who 
will  patiently  follow  the  vast  reaches  of  his  thought  in  this  sublime 
poem  of  the  'Universe'  will  find  that  he  arrives  at  a  form  of  unbelief 
far  more  appalling  than  that  expressed  in  the  gloomy  pantheism  of 
India,  since  it  assumes  that  the  central,  creative  Soul  is,  alternatively, 
not  diffused  only,  but  merged  and  lost  in  the  universe,  and  the  universe 
in  it:  'A  new  universe  swelling  into  existence  or  subsiding  into  noth 
ingness  at  every  throb  of  the  Heart  Divine.  * 

The  creative  Energy,  therefore,  'now  exists  solely  in  the  diffused 
matter  and  spirit,  of  the  existing  universe.'  The  author  assumes, 
moreover,  that  each  individual  soul  retains  in  its  youth  a  dim  con 
sciousness  of  vast  dooms  and  destinies  far  distant  in  the  bygone  time, 
and  infinitely  awful;  from  which  inherent  consciousness  the  conven 
tional  'World-Reason'  at  last  awakens  it  as  from  a  dream.  'It  says 
you  live,  and  the  time  was  when  you  lived  not.  You  have  been  created. 
An  Intelligence  exists  greater  than  your  own,  and  it  is  only  through 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY         77 

this  Intelligence  that  you  live  at  all.1  These  things,'  he  says,  'we 
struggle  to  comprehend  and  cannot:  cannot,  because  being  untrue,  they 
are  of  necessity  incomprehensible/ 

Woodberry,  not  altogether  relying  on  his  own  ability 
to  solve  Poe's  conception  of  this  riddle  of  the  universe, 
called  on  Professor  Irving  Stringham  of  the  Astronomical 
Department  of  the  University  of  California  "for  the  sub 
stance  of  the  criticism  of  Poe's  astronomical  speculations." 
The  result  of  their  double  labor  still  leaves  much  to  be 
explained : 

The  mind  knows  intuitively  .  .  .  that  the  creative  act  of  Deity 
must  have  been  the  simplest  possible;  or,  to  expand  and  define  this 
statement,  it  must  have  consisted  in  willing  into  being  a  primordial 
particle,  the  germ  of  all  things  existing  without  relation  to  aught,  or, 
in  the  technical  phrase,  unconditioned. 

This  particle,  by  virtue  of  the  divine  volition,  radiated  into  space 
uniformly  in  all  directions,  a  shower  of  atoms,  of  diverse  form,  irregu 
larly  arranged  among  themselves,  but  all,  generally  speaking,  equally 
distant  from  their  source;  this  operation  was  repeated  at  intervals, 
but  with  decreased  energy  in  each  new  instance,  so  that  the  atoms 
were  impelled  less  far. 

So  this  composite  explanation  continues  for  several 
pages  and  a  fairly  lucid — as  demonstrated  by  this  excerpt 
— explanation  is  made  of  Poe's  Theory  of  the  Universe. 
However,  the  scrambled  expositions  of  Poe,  Woodberry 
and  Stringham  do  not  seem  to  me  to  bear  a  marked  resem 
blance  to  Poe's  unscrambled  statement.  Poe  himself  might 
have  felt  highly  gratified  could  he  have  read  this  apprecia 
tion,  but  I  believe  that  he  would  have  rejected  at  least 
two-thirds  of  the  statements  it  contains. 

I  do  not  mean  to  criticize,  or  to  deny,  the  ability  of 
either  critic  further  than  to  suggest  that  where  a  thing  is 
so  essentially  obscure,  and  so  evidently  unformed  in  the 
creator's  own  brain,  it  was  not  wise  to  attempt  a  solution. 
Their  double  explanation  is  sufficiently  lucid.  Just  how 


78        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

nearly  it  represents  Poe's  basic  idea  is  the  matter  which 
I  regard  as  debatable. 
Woodberry  concludes  his  full  review : 

Eureka  affords  one  of  the  most  striking  instances  in  literature  of  a 
naturally  strong  intellect  tempted  by  overweening  pride,  to  an  Icarian 
flight,  and  betrayed  into  an  ignoble  exposure  of  its  own  presumption 
and  ignorance. 

He  further  states : 

Nor,  were  Eureka  to  be  judged  as  a  poem,  that  is  to  say  as  a  fic 
titious  cosmogony,  would  the  decision  be  more  favorable ;  even  then  so 
far  as  it  is  obscure  to  the  reader  it  must  be  pronounced  defective ;  so 
far  as  it  is  understood,  involving  as  it  does  in  its  primary  conceptions 
incessant  contradictions  of  the  necessary  laws  of  thought,  it  must  be 
pronounced  meaningless.  Poe  believed  himself  to  be  that  extinct  being, 
a  universal  genius  of  the  highest  order;  and  he  wrote  this  essay  to 
prove  his  powers  in  philosophy  and  in  science.  To  the  correspondent 
to  whom  he  sent  the  addenda  he  declared  'As  to  the  lecture,  I  am  very 
quiet  about  it — but  if  you  have  dealt  with  such  topics,  you  will  recog 
nize  the  novelty  and  moment  of  my  views.  What  I  have  propounded 
will  (in  good  time)  revolutionize  the  world  of  Physical  and  Metaphysi 
cal  science.  I  say  this  calmly,  but  I  say  it.' 

Lauvriere's  solution,  contained  in  a  Life  of  Poe,  is  thus 
stated : 

In  the  Beginning,  God  created  a  particle  without  form,  without 
individuality,  without  emptiness,  absolutely  unique.  This  particle  was 
the  germ  of  all  things.  It  glittered  in  space  in  a  wave  of  unequally  dis 
tributed  atoms  of  different  shapes.  Other  waves  followed,  the  atoms 
of  which  were  forced  among  the  original  atoms  by  a  slight  pressure. 
Still  other  waves  followed  that  were  somewhat  weaker,  but  which,  in 
time,  more  or  less  completely  filled  this  space  with  a  multitude  of 
atoms.  Bearing  a  proportion  to  the  number  of  atoms  at  the  surface  of 
this  sphere  and  starting  at  the  square  of  the  distance  between  these 
surfaces  and  the  center,  the  force  of  diffusion  continues  to  decrease.  * 

As  soon  as  this  is  exhausted  an  attractive  force  which  is  the  natural 
reaction,  and  which  is  in  inverse  proportion  to  thesquareof  thisdistance, 
develops  and  in  its  turn  draws  back  the  mass  of  atoms  to  a  common 

*Proportionne  a  la  fois  au  nombre  des  atomes,  aux  surfaces  des  spheres,  et, 
partant,  au  carre  des  distances  entre  ces  surfaces  et  la  centre,  la  force  diffusive  n* 
cesse  de  decroitre. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        79 

center.  To  prevent  the  immediate  return  of  the  atoms  to  their  primi 
tive  unity  a  third  force  manifests  itself.  This  is  a  repulsive  force, 
agglomerating  these  atoms  into  a  mass,  slowly  forming  sidereal  bodies 
of  infinite  and  heterogeneous  shapes.  This  repulsive  force,  a  form  of 
immaterial  ether  which,  lacking  a  better  name,  Poe  called  electricity, 
manifests  itself  in  light,  heat,  magnetism,  even  in  life  and  brain  power. 
It  is  the  spiritual  element  of  things  divine  and  for  this  reason  it  is  im 
possible  of  human  analysis.  It  is  the  breath  of  God  animating  all 
beings  on  this  earth  with  a  greater  or  less  consciousness  of  divinity.  Our 
universe,  where  all  these  phenomena  actually  take  place,  is  filled  with 
these  reactions  and  with  consequent  condensation,  the  result  of  evo 
lution.  While  the  force  of  attraction  slowly  condenses  it,  that  of 
repulsion  shapes  it  into  combinations  more  and  more  complicated. 
However,  as,  in  time,  the  play  of  these  combinations  will  become 
exhausted  because  the  divine  laws  of  creation  have  been  fulfilled,  the 
attractive  force,  the  inevitable  consequence  of  primitive  diffusion  can 
only  increase  itself  in  proportion  to  the  force  of  repulsion,  it  being  a 
temporary  invention  of  God  that  will  have  been  lost.*  From  this  will 
come  the  fated  result  that  all  created  worlds  will,  one  by  one,  be  in  the 
central  conflagration  by  which  means  matter,  which  is  in  fact  only 
the  result  of  attractive  and  repulsive  forces,  will  be  swallowed  up; — 
will  be  engulfed  in  the  bosom  of  the  initial  particle,  and  in  the  confu 
sion  of  the  two  forces  that  constitute  it.  Thus  will  end  our  existing 
universe.  Others  may  come  after  it,  as  others  have  preceded  it,  and  as 
others  possibly  exist  in  infinite  space.  For  each  creation,  in  essence,  is 
only  the  ephemeral  result  of  a  diffusion  and  reabsorption  into  the 
divine  being.  This  was  Poe's  conception  of  the  universe. 

It  is  certain  that  Poe  believed  he  knew  what  he  was 
trying  to  express  and,  in  his  attempt  to  make  this  plain  to 
the  world,  he  used  all  the  powers  of  thought-compelling 
English  in  his  vocabulary  to  convey  his  meaning  to  the 
world,  still  in  ignorance  of  the  first  cause. 

Poe's  theories  have  been  variously  interpreted  and, 
a  matter  of  surprise  to  me,  serious  attempts  have  been 
made  to  formulate  them.  He  has  excited  the  admiration, 

*Mais,  lorsqu'a  la  longue  se  trouvera  epuise  le  jeu  de  ces  combinaisions,  lorsque 
seront  accomplies  les  vues,  divines  sur  la  creation,  la  force  d 'attraction,  consequence 
inevitable  de  la  diffusion  primitive,  ne  pourra  que  s'accroitre  de  tout  ce  que  la 
force  de  repulsion,  simple  intervention  temporaire  de  Dieu,  aura  perdu. 


80        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

even  if  he  has  not  been  able  to  satisfy  the  comprehension 
of  many  of  his  biographers. 

Poe's  own  elucidation  deserves  some  consideration.  In 
discussing  the  subject  as  it  was  given  in  his  preliminary 
lecture  he  thus  epitomized  it : 

General  Proposition.  Because  nothing  was,  therefore  all  things  are. 

1 .  An  inspection  of  the  universality  of  gravitation — of  the  fact  that 
each  particle  tends  not  to  any  one  common  point,  but  to  every  other 
particle,  suggests  perfect  totality  of  absolute  unity  as  the  source  of  the 
phenomenon. 

2.  Gravity  is  but  the  mode  in  which  is  manifested  the  tendency 
of  all  things  to  return  into  their  original  unity. 

3.  I  show  that  the  law  of  the  return — i.  e.,  the  law  of  gravity — is 
but  a  necessary  result  of  the  necessary  and  sole  possible  mode  of 
equable  irradiation  of  matter  through  a  limited  space. 

4.  Were  the  universe  of  stars  (contradistinguished  from  the  uni 
verse  of  space)  unlimited,  no  worlds  could  exist. 

5.  I  show  unity  is  nothingness. 

6.  All  matter  springing  from  unity  sprang  from  nothingness,  i.  e., 
was  created. 

7.  All  will  return  to  unity,  i.  e.,  nothingness. 

I  would  be  obliged  to  you  if  you  would  let  me  know  how  far  these 
ideas  are  coincident  with  those  of  the  'Vestiges,' 

Very  Resp'y  yr.  ob.  St., 
EDGAR  A.  POE. 

Poe's  complete  statement  of  his  theory  is  not  more 
comprehensible : 

I  design  to  speak  of  the  Physical,  Metaphysical  and  Mathematical — 
of  the  Material  and  Spiritual  Universe: — of  its  Existence,  its  Origin,  its 
Creation,  its  Present  Conditions  and  its  Destiny.  .  .  .  My  general 
proposition,  then,  is  this: — In  the  Original  Unity  of  the  First  Thing 
lies  the  Secondary  Cause  of  ALL  Things,  with  the  Germ  of  their  In 
evitable  Annihilation.  .  .  . 

As  our  starting-point,  then,  let  us  adopt  the  Godhead.  Of  this  God 
head  in  itself,  he  alone  is  not  imbecile — he  alone  is  not  impious  who 
propounds — nothing.  "We  know  absolutely  nothing  of  the  nature  or 
essence  of  God : — in  order  to  comprehend  what  he  is,  we  should  have  to 
be  God  ourselves.  .  .  .  By  Him,  however — now,  at  least,  the  Incompre- 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        81 

hensible — by  Him — assuming  him  as  Spirit — that  is  to  say,  as  not 
Matter — a  distinction  which,  for  all  intelligible  purposes,  will  stand 
well  instead  of  a  definition — by  Him,  then,  existing  as  a  Spirit,  let  us 
content  ourselves,  to-night,  with  supposing  to  have  been  created,  or 
made  out  of  nothing,  [not  a  shower  of  atoms,  created  from  a  particle, 
radiated  into  space  uniformly  in  all  directions,  as  Woodberry  inter 
prets  it]  by  dint  of  his  Volition — at  some  point  of  Space  which  we  will 
take  as  a  center — at  some  period  into  which  we  do  not  pretend  to 
inquire,  but  at  all  events  immensely  remote — by  Him,  then  again,  let 
us  suppose  to  have  been  created — what!  This  is  a  vitally  momentous 
epoch  in  our  considerations.  What  is  it  that  we  are  justified — that 
alone  we  are  justified  in  supposing  to  have  been,  primarily  and  solely, 
createdl  We  have  attained  a  point  where  only  Intuition  can  aid  us: — 
but  now  let  me  recur  to  the  idea  which  I  have  already  suggested  as 
that  alone  which  we  can  properly  entertain  of  Intuition.  It  is  but  the 
conviction  arising  from  those  inductions  or  deductions  of  which  the  pro 
cesses  are  so  shadowy  as  to  escape  our  consciousness,  elude  our  reason,  or 
defy  our  capacity  of  expression. 

With  this  understanding,  I  now  assert — that  an  intuition  alto 
gether  irresistible,  although  inexpressible,  forces  me  to  the  conclusion 
that  what  God  originally  created — that  that  Matter  which,  by  dint  of 
his  Volition,  he  first  made  from  his  Spirit,  or  from  Nihility,  could  have 
been  nothing  but  Matter  in  its  utmost  conceivable  state  of — what  ? — 
of  Simplicity?  This  will  be  found  the  sole  absolute  assumption  of  my 
Discourse. 

There  are  more  than  one  hundred  pages  of  this — and 
such.  I  have  read  it  attentively  and  have  tried  to  under 
stand  it,  but  it  is  beyond  my  comprehension. 

In  the  preparation  of  ' 'Eureka/'  and  in  the  earnestness 
with  which  Poe  advanced  the  most  abstruse  and  incompre 
hensible  theories  as  if  they  were  axioms  and  in  themselves 
bore  irrefutable  evidence  of  truth ;  in  his  belief  that  his  repu 
tation  would  be  founded,  not  on  his  tales  nor  on  his  poetry 
which,  to  the  last,  he  affected  to  regard  as  trifles,  but  on  the 
demonstrated  facts  contained  in  this  epoch-making  book, 
lie  the  proofs  of  his  morbid  state.  Apparently  he  believed 
that  this  discovery  would  be  the  foundation  on  which  the 
world  would  erect  his  cenotaph,  that  the  subject  "was 


82        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

of  momentous  interest/'  and  that  the  truths  which  he 
disclosed  "were  of  more  consequence  than  the  theory  of 
gravitation/'  Later  he  wrote  a  letter  in  answer  to  a  criti 
cism  of  Eureka,  in  which  he  stated : 

The  ground  covered  by  La  Place  compares  with  that  covered  by 
my  own  theory,  as  a  bubble  with  the  ocean  on  which  it  floats. 

Poe  believed  that  he  had  solved  the  riddle  of  the  uni 
verse.  He  criticized  Kepler,  La  Place  and  Newton;  at  the 
same  time  his  statements  showed  that  he  possessed  only 
a  smattering  of  their  theories. 

None  of  his  biographers  saw  in '  'Eureka'  *  the  pitiful  exhi 
bition  of  a  decaying  intellect  no  longer  under  the  domina 
tion  of  a  strong  and  directing  intelligence. 

And  travelers  now  within  that  valley, 
Through  the  red-littened  windows,  see 
Vast  forms  that  move  fantastically 
To  a  discordant  melody. 

And  we  find  him  a  paranoid  vociferously  voicing  unintel 
ligible  hypotheses  based  on  misconception  and  ignorance 
of  natural  laws. 

Poe's  abnormality  consisted  not  in  theorizing  and  at 
tempting  to  explain  things  unexplainable,  for  this  is  a 
matter  of  daily  occurrence  even  among  the  normal,  but  in 
his  inability  to  understand  the  basic  absurdities  and  false 
reasoning  on  which  his  beliefs  were  founded.  An  insane 
man  may  be  the  most  logical  of  all  logicians,  provided  you 
grant  his  premises.  The  untenableness  of  these,  out  of 
which  he  cannot  be  reasoned,  constitutes  his  insanity. 

It  was  during  this  time  that  Poe,  in  a  letter  to  Eveleth, 
described  himself : 

I  became  insane,  with  long  periods  of  horrible  sanity.  During  these 
fits  of  absolute  unconsciousness  I  drank.  God  only  knows  how  much  or 
how  long.  As  a  matter  of  course  my  enemies  referred  the  insanity  to 
the  drink  rather  than  the  drink  to  the  insanity. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        83 

Another  manifestation  of  Poe's  abnormal  mental  state 
during  the  last  few  years  of  his  life  was  the  platonic  love  he 
exhibited  for  the  women  with  whom  he  associated.  Though 
it  is  certain  that  Poe  did  love  his  wife,  it  was  not  after  the 
manner  of  the  cave  man.  She  was  an  invalid,  slowly  dy 
ing  of  consumption  and  for  many  years  Poe  attended  her, 
nursed  her,  and  was  not  only  a  devoted  but  a  faithful  hus 
band.  Mrs.  Weiss  has  strongly  dwelt  on  the  nature  of  the  re 
lation  that  existed  between  Poe  and  his  wife.  She  insists  that 
the  marriage  was  one  of  convenience,  not  love,  and  that  it 
was  to  Mrs.  Clemm  rather  than  to  the  daughter  that  Poe 
turned  for  intellectual  sympathy.  Apparently  neither 
could  greatly  have  aided  him  by  literary  companionship. 
Mrs.  Phelps,  in  an  article  quoted  by  Woodberry,  amplifies 
Mrs.  Weiss'  suggestion: 

Mrs.  Clemm,  his  aunt,  was  my  mother's  dear  friend.  I  know  some 
thing  about  that  [this  marriage],  having  heard  my  mother  and  Mrs. 
Clemm  discuss  it.  He  did  not  love  his  cousin,  except  as  a  dear  cousin, 
when  he  married  her,  but  she  was  very  fondly  attached  to  him  and  was 
frail  and  consumptive.  While  she  lived  he  devoted  himself  to  her  with 
all  the  ardor  of  a  lover. 

In  all  the  years  of  their  married  life  and  until  a  short 
time  preceding  her  death,  no  breath  of  scandal  ever 
touched  Poe's  name,  in  spite  of  the  known  uncanny 
attraction  that  he  exercised  over  women,  which  later 
resulted  in  so  many  complications.  Had  there  been,  even 
secretly,  a  history  of  this  kind  there  could  have  been  no 
such  devotion  and  tender  solicitude  for  him  as  was  shown 
by  his  wife's  mother,  a  bond  that  death  itself  could  not 
sever. 

Yet,  even  before  his  wife  died,  at  least  one  aft'air  oc 
curred  which  we  find  described  as  follows : 

Early  in  1845  he  had  formed  such  an  attachment  with  Mrs. 
Frances  Sargent  Osgood,  a  poetess  of  thirty  and  the  wife  of  an  Ameri 
can  artist.  .  .  .  Poe  had  noticed  her  verses  with  great  favor,  and  in 
his  New  York  lecture,  in  February,  especially  eulogized  her  in  warm 


84        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

terms.  Shortly  after  this  latter  incident  Willis  one  day  handed  her  The 
Raven,  with  the  author's  request  for  her  judgment  on  it,  and  for  an 
introduction  to  herself. 

Mrs.  Osgood's  own  impression  of  Poe  is  given  as  follows : 

I  shall  never  forget  the  morning  I  was  summoned  to  the  drawing 
room  to  receive  him.  With  his  proud  and  beautiful  head  erect,  his  dark 
eyes  flashing  with  the  electric  light  of  feeling  and  of  thought,  a  peculiar, 
an  inimitable  blending  of  sweetness  and  hauteur  in  his  manner  and  ex 
pression,  he  greeted  me,  calmly,  gravely,  almost  coldly,  yet  with  so 
marked  an  earnestness  that  I  could  not  help  being  impressed  by  it. 

Again  she  says : 

I  never  thought  of  him  till  he  sent  me  his  Raven,  and  asked  Willis 
to  introduce  him  to  me,  and  immediately  after  I  went  to  Albany,  and 
afterwards  to  Boston  and  Providence  to  avoid  him,  and  he  followed 
me  to  each  of  those  places  and  wrote  to  me,  imploring  me  to  love  him, 
many  a  letter  which  I  did  not  reply  to  till  his  wife  added  her  entreaties 
to  his  and  said  that  I  might  save  him  from  infamy,  and  her  from  death, 
by  showing  an  affectionate  interest  in  him. 

These  and  other  statements  were  made  by  Mrs.  Osgood 
in  an  account  of  Poe  written  after  his  death.  She  sums 
up  her  review  as  follows : 

But  it  was  in  his  conversations  and  his  letters,  far  more  than  in 
his  published  poetry  and  prose  writings,  that  the  genius  of  Poe  was 
most  gloriously  revealed.  His  letters  were  divinely  beautiful,  and 
for  hours  I  have  listened  to  him,  entranced  by  strains  of  such  pure 
and  almost  celestial  eloquence  as  I  have  never  read  or  heard  else 
where.  Alas!  in  the  thrilling  words  of  Stoddard, 

'  He  might  have  soared  in  the  morning  light, 

But  he  built  his  nest  with  the  birds  of  night ! 

But  he  lies  in  dust,  and  the  stone  is  rolled 

Over  the  sepulchre  dim  and  cold ; 

He  has  cancelled  all  he  has  done  or  said, 

And  gone  to  the  dear  and  holy  dead. 

Let  us  forget  the  path  he  trod, 

And  leave  him  now,  to  his  Maker,  God.' 

A  delegation  of  women,  headed  by  Margaret  Fuller,  at 
tempted  to  break  this  most  cherished  friendship  and  made 
a  formal  protest.  A  letter  was  found  by  a  woman  who 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        85 

was  visiting  the  Poe  household  and,  in  a  jealous  rage, 
she  circulated  stories  that  seriously  reflected  on  Mrs.  Os- 
good.  This  woman  also  had  written  Poe  compromis 
ing  letters  and,  when  he  knew  of  her  activities,  he  threat 
ened,  in  revenge,  to  make  these  letters  public.  It  was  on 
this  woman's  assertions  that  English  and  Griswold  based 
their  charge  of  blackmail,  for  which  Poe  brought  and 
won  a  suit  for  defamation  of  character.  Undoubtedly 
Poe's  abnormal  condition,  even  at  that  time,  was  known 
and  understood  by  his  immediate  family — otherwise  it  is 
not  possible  for  such  association  to  have  been  carried  on 
with  the  knowledge  and  consent  of  his  wife  and,  neces 
sarily,  of  Mrs.  Clemm. 

Soon  after  Mrs.  Poe's  death,  and  while  Poe  was  conva 
lescing  from  a  long  and  serious  illness  that  had  mentally 
incapacitated  him,  there  was  another  platonic  adventure. 
This  time  it  was  with  Mrs.  Shew,  a  family  friend  older 
than  himself,  who  was  nursing  him  and  had  been  most 
considerate  in  looking  after  the  financial  needs  of  the  fam 
ily.  His  irresponsible  condition  was  realized  and,  there 
fore,  no  particular  attention  was  paid  to  the  matter 
further  than  that  it  necessitated  a  severance  of  personal 
intercourse : 

Mrs.  Shew  finding  that  her  protege  was  too  irresponsible  and  ro 
mantic  to  be  allowed  freedom  as  he  had  been  accustomed  to,  broke  off 
the  acquaintance.  The  consequence  which,  although  he  had  foreseen 
it,  must  in  his  state  of  health  have  been  the  sudden  and  complete  cessa 
tion  of  intercourse  between  the  two  families. 

It  is  certain  that  both  Mrs.  Clemm  and  Mrs.  Shew  re 
garded  this  merely  as  a  manifestation  of  Poe's  mental 
state;  the  mother-love  was  not  abated  and  Mrs.  Shew  con 
tinued  her  friendly  ministrations — from  a  distance. 

Poe  wrote  her  a  long  and  rambling  letter,  maudlin  and 
incoherent,  and  not  such  as  a  normal  Poe  would  have 
written : 


86        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

Are  you  to  vanish  like  all  that  I  love,  or  desire,  from  my  darkened 
and  'lost  soul'  ?  I  have  read  over  your  letter  again  and  again,  and  can 
not  make  it  possible  with  any  degree  of  certainty,  that  you  wrote  it  in 
your  right  mind.  .  .  . 

Your  ingenuous  and  sympathetic  nature  will  be  constantly 
wounded  by  its  contact  with  the  hollow,  heartless  world ;  and  for  me, 
alas !  unless  some  true  and  tender,  and  pure  womanly  love  saves  me,  I 
shall  hardly  last  a  year  longer  alive.  .  .  .  Why  turn  your  soul  from  its 
true  work  for  the  desolate  to  the  thankless  and  miserly  world  ?  .  .  .  I 
felt  my  heart  stop,  and  I  was  sure  I  was  then  to  die  before  your  eyes. 
Louise,  it  is  well — it  is  fortunate — you  looked  up  with  a  tear  in  your 
dear  eyes,  and  raised  the  window,  and  talked  of  the  guava  jelly  you 
had  brought  for  my  sore  throat. 

Almost  as  absurd  was  the  passion  Poe  developed  for 
Mrs.  Whitman,  the  poetess,  a  widow  some  six  years  older 
than  himself.  This  passion  was  a  more  serious  matter, 
for  she  responded  to  the  call.  Griswold  related,  with  great 
detail,  many  things  that  bore  on  this  courtship;  but,  as 
usual,  the  facts  were  distorted  and  his  statements  were 
absolutely  denied  by  Mrs.  Whitman.  It  is  impossible  to 
doubt  the  truth  of  either  Mrs.  Whitman's  statements  or 
her  knowledge  of  the  facts  which  Griswold  alleged  occurred 
in  her  home;  and,  inasmuch  as  these  allegations  were  un 
true,  nothing  could  more  seriously  reflect  on  Griswold's 
honor  or  better  show  the  animus  of  his  memoir. 

That  Poe  was  at  times  abnormal  Mrs.  Whitman  does  not 
deny,  and  it  was  her  realization  of  his  condition  that  pre 
vented  their  marriage.  His  actions  were  simply  the  result  of 
an  unbalanced  mind,  craving  love  and  sympathy,  yet 
unable  to  control  and  govern  itself;  drifting  into  danger 
ous  waters  without  pilot  or  rudder. 

Poe,  during  his  last  visits  to  Richmond  that  preceeded 
his  death,  again  proposed  marriage ;  this  time  to  a  child 
hood  friend  with  whom  it  is  said  that,  as  a  boy,  he  had 
been  in  love.  With  still  another  he  was  more  sinned 
against  than  sinning. 

All  commentators  on  the  writings  of  Poe  have  called 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        87 

special  attention  to  the  small  part  love  plays  in  any  of  his 
stories,  and  to  the  fact  that  nowhere,  and  on  no  occasion 
does  he  mention  woman  without  due  reverence. 

I  believe  that  there  was  only  one  woman  besides  his  wife 
to  whom  Poe  was  attracted  or  on  whom  he  leaned.  It  was 
of  her  he  thought  in  the  dark  days  when  his  desolate  and 
hungry  heart  demanded  "surcease  of  sorrow."  This  was 
neither  Mrs.  Shew,  nor  was  it  Mrs.  Osgood;  it  was  not 
Mrs.  Whitman  nor  was  it  Mrs.  Shelton.  It  was  Annie, 
"my  beloved  sister,"  as  he  was  pleased  to  call  her,  and  I 
believe  that  his  other  infatuations,  as  well  as  his  peculiar 
conduct  with  Mrs.  Whitman,  were  merely  the  result  of 
his  disordered  fancy. 

If  Poe  ever  loved  any  woman,  as  contradistinguished 
from  women,  it  was  "Annie/*  She  appealed  to  him  in  the 
only  way  a  woman  can  properly  appeal  to  a  man.  Love, 
with  a  foundation  of  respect,  can  never  be  destroyed. 

It  was  to  "Annie"  Poe's  heart  turned  in  his  darkest  days 
and,  when  the  melancholy  night  forced  on  him  the  urge 
of  death  as  the  only  release  from  his  overpowering  depres 
sion,  it  was  of  "Annie"  he  thought,  and  to  her  in  his 
agony  he  wrote  the  farewell  letter. 

He  described  her  in  Landors  Cottage  which,  in  one  of  his 
letters,  he  said  contained  "something  about  Annie" : 

Instantly  a  figure  advanced  to  the  threshold — that  of  a  young  wo 
man,  slender,  or  rather  slight,  and  somewhat  above  the  medium 
height.  As  she  approached,  with  a  certain  modest  decision  of  step  al 
together  indescribable,  I  said  to  myself,  'Surely  here  I  have  found  the 
perfection  of  natural  in  contradistinction  from  artificial  grace/  The 
second  impression  which  she  made  on  me,  but  by  far  the  more  vivid  of 
the  two,  was  that  of  enthusiasm.  So  intense  an  expression  of  romance, 
perhaps  I  should  call  it,  or  of  unworldliness,  as  that  which  gleamed 
from  her  deep-set  eyes,  had  never  so  sunk  into  my  heart  of  hearts  be 
fore.  I  know  not  how  it  is,  but  this  peculiar  expression  of  the  eye, 
wreathing  itself  occasionally  into  the  lips,  is  the  most  powerful,  if  not 
absolutely  the  sole  spell,  which  rivets  my  interest  in  woman.  'Ro- 


88        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

mance*  provided  my  readers  fully  comprehend  what  I  would  here 
imply  by  the  word — 'romance'  and  'womanliness'  seem  to  me  conver 
tible  terms :  and,  after  all,  what  man  truly  loves  in  woman,  is,  simply, 
her  womanhood.  The  eyes  of  Annie  (I  heard  someone  from  the  interior 
call  her  'Annie,  darling!')  were  'spiritual  gray' ;  her  hair,  a  light  chest 
nut  :  this  is  all  I  had  time  to  observe  of  her. 

It  was  "For  Annie"  that  one  of  his  most  remarkable — 
Stedman  names  it  the  finest,  and  I  know  no  better  Poe 
authority — poems  was  written  and  to  her  he  consecrates 
his  eternal  love : 

And  so  it  lies  happily, 

Bathing  in  many 
A  dream  of  the  truth 

And  the  beauty  of  Annie — 
Drowned  in  a  bath 

Of  the  tresses  of  Annie. 

She  tenderly  kissed  me, 

She  fondly  caressed, 
And  then  I  fell  gently 

To  sleep  on  her  breast. 
Deeply  to  sleep 

From  the  heaven  of  her  breast. 

And  I  rest  so  contentedly, 

Now  in  my  bed 
(With  her  love  at  my  breast) 

That  you  fancy  me  dead — 
That  you  shudder  to  look  at  me, 

Thinking  me  dead : — • 

But  my  heart  it  is  brighter 

Than  all  of  the  many 
Stars  in  the  sky, 

For  it  sparkles  with  Annie 
It  glows  with  the  light 

Of  the  love  of  my  Annie — 
With  the  thought  of  the  light 

Of  the  eyes  of  my  Annie. 

I  do  not  believe  that  Poe,  either  at  that  time  or  later,  was 
insane  in  the  usually  accepted  sense.  It  is  true  that  by 
heredity  he  was  abnormal.  It  is  certain  that  he  did  not,  in 
the  ordinary  relations  of  life,  always  view  things  as  the 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        89 

normal  individual  does ;  but  just  who  is  normal  is  a  matter 
difficult  to  decide.  I  have  met  and  studied  many  men.  I 
have  read  the  biographies  and  autobiographies  of  many 
and  know  of  some  others  by  tradition.  I  have  found  no 
man  who  ever  freely  confessed  to  evil  doing,  except  pos 
sibly  poor  Pepys ;  or  who  would  analyze  himself,  his  daily 
acts  or  the  motives  which  underlie  those  acts,  and  tabu 
late  them  as  they  should  be  tabulated  in  the  moral  code. 
Even  to  themselves  they  misstate  and  hide,  extenuate  or 
actually  do  not  realize,  as  was  the  case  with  Rousseau,  the 
abnormalities  which  deform  their  inner  lives. 

Tvcodi  a*  awov  is  a  Utopian  concept  impossible  of  literal 
realization. 

No  man  can  know  himself,  nor  can  he  fairly  judge  his 
own  actions.  Compulsions  seem,  at  times,  to  be  excellent 
reasons :  like  the  convex  mirror  the  mind  can  not  reflect  the 
image  in  its  true  proportions.  Occasionally,  Narcissus-like, 
it  becomes  enamored  of  the  picture  reflected  in  its  depths. 

I  know  of  but  one  man,  and  of  him  by  legend  only,  who 
led  an  unblemished  and  absolutely  moral  life,  pure  in 
thought  and  with  no  remembrance  of  any  evil  act,  and 
therefore  without  a  realizing  conscience. 

There  is  one  other  man  whom,  for  some  sixty  years,  I 
have  known  intimately,  and  whom  for  that  reason,  perhaps, 
I  judge  leniently,  who  is  under  the  conviction  that  his 
every  action  is  dominated  by  the  highest  principles  only, 
and  that  the  golden  rule  is  his  guide — provided  a  few 
occasional  deviations  are  allowed  proper  explanation. 
Nevertheless,  even  he  finds  that  there  are  unplumbed 
depths  in  the  recesses  of  his  secret  soul  that  remain  un 
charted,  and  unexpected  mental  reservations  at  times  arise 
that  deflect  the  pure  ray  of  righteousness  so  that  it 
does  not  always  make  luminous  the  hidden  heart-spring  of 
action ;  and  that  possibly  certain  inherited  prejudices  cling 
to  and  distort  a  judgment  otherwise  absolutely  free,  un- 


90        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

warped,  and  untrammeled.  I  also  know  very  many  men, 
some  in  San  Quentin  and  others  who  should  be  there, 
all  convinced  of  the  honesty  of  their  motives  and  the 
righteousness  of  their  lives ;  only  some  circumstance  over 
which  they  had  no  control,  or  a  carping  world  and  an  over- 
severe  moral  code,  prevented  them  from  being  properly 
understood  and  caused  them  to  be  misjudged.  The  fault 
is  with  the  world  and  not  with  themselves.  Nature  has 
inoculated  us  with  a  moral  serum  which  prevents  us  from 
being  poisoned  by  our  own  virus.  The  world  is  full  of  Holy 
Willies :  if  we  could  see  ourselves  as  other  people  sometimes 
see  us,  it  would  be  an  unlivable  world.  Years  of  study  and 
observation  have  made  me  lenient  in  judging  the  faults 
of  those  I  know.  Heredity  is  as  responsible  for  our  good 
qualities  and  our  successes  as  it  is  for  the  evil  that  is  in 
us,  and  our  failures. 

The  world  is  a  most  uncharitable  judge  in  awarding  pun 
ishments  and  rewards;  it  builds  jails,  poorhouses  and  asy 
lums  for  those  who  fail  because  nature  has  handicapped 
them  in  their  life-race,  while  it  praises  and  honors  those 
who  succeed  because  they  are  bountifully  endowed.  We 
know,  further,  that  great  genius  such  as  Poe  inherited  is 
always  accompanied  and  can  be  seriously  modified  by  a 
neurosis  that  may  end  in  moral  or  mental  degeneration. 

In  recent  years  many  books  have  been  written  on  the 
relation  existing  between  genius  and  insanity,  and  "The 
Insanity  of  Genius"  has  become  a  familiar  theme  because 
so  many  "psychologists"  and  pseudo-scientists  have  en 
deavored  to  point  out  a  close  relationship.  In  the  popu 
lar  estimation,  they  seem  to  have  proved  that  genius  and 
insanity  as  mental  states  are  almost  identical. 

Alienists  resent  this  loose  classification  and,  while  they 
recognize  a  pathological  basis  for  both  insanity  and  genius, 
which  bear  some  relation  to  each  other  because  they  both 
belong  to  the  same  great  family  group,  they  also  recog- 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        91 

nize  that,  in  the  practical  application  of  this  theoretical 
association  there  is,  separating  these  varying  abnormal 
ities  a  chasm  as  deep  as  the  Grand  Canyon  and  as 
broad  as  the  Painted  Desert.  We  differentiate  them  as  dis 
tinctly  as  we  do  the  cerulean  water  of  Tahoe  or  the  Dolo 
mite  lakes  from  the  muddy  streams  that  mark  the  workings 
of  our  placer  mines.  Neither  is  crystal  clear. 

Insanity  chooses  for  its  victims  not  the  highly  intelli 
gent  nor  the  genius,  but  rather  the  subnormal  and  "the 
unwashed."  Overstudy  is  the  most  frequently  alleged  yet 
the  most  infrequent  cause  of  insanity.  I  have  examined, 
studied  and '  'psychologized' '  many  thousands  of  insane  per 
sons  and  I  have  access  to  the  records  of  a  hundred  thous 
and,  but  nowhere  have  I  found  even  a  normal  proportion 
between  the  educated  and  the  uneducated.  Personally  I 
know  a  few  men  of  genius  whom  I  denominate  cranks,  but 
I  surely  do  not  regard  them  as  insane.  Only  rarely  do  they 
pass  the  line  of  demarcation  and  develop  such  delusions  as 
constitute  insanity.  I  have  studied  the  life  histories  of  the 
many  great  writers  and  artists  who  have  been  recklessly 
included  in  this  classification.  Only  occasionally  can  the 
verdict  of  insanity  be  justly  pronounced :  there  are  found 
many  eccentricities,  abnormalities,  compulsions  and  obses 
sions  which,  to  the  psychologist,  are  exceedingly  interesting 
as  exhibiting  mental  greatness,  as  well  as  mental  weakness. 
Often  do  we  find  the  two  combined  so  wonderfully  as  to 
excite  our  comment — even  to  the  extent  of  insisting  that 
they  are  unsound ;  but  this  charge  of  unsoundness  by  no 
means  can  be  considered  tantamount  to  insanity. 

Genius  rarely  runs  amuck. 

The  assertion  has  been  made  that  alienists  regard  all  the 
world  as  insane.  This  is  true  in  the  sense  that  there  is  no  in 
dividual  without  peculiarities.  This  does  not  mean  that 
the  whole  world  is  insane,  but  it  does  mean  that  no  human 
being  lives  who,  when  weighed,  will  not  be  found  wanting 


92        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

in  some  normal  quality  or  attribute,  and  who  will  not 
show  a  mental  peculiarity  in  some  special  thing  or  way. 
Emeralds  that  are  without  flaw  are  regarded  by  lapidaries 
with  suspicion,  for  none  are  found  in  nature :  they  can  ap 
pear  perfect  only  when  synthetically  manufactured.  It 
must  be  understood  that  mental  peculiarities  and  moral 
idiosyncrasies  do  not  constitute  insanity :  only  because  we 
regard  these  deviations  from  the  normal  as  hereditary  and 
often  impossible  to  overcome,  are  they  classed  in  the 
group  of  the  Unsound.  In  other  words  we  are  willing  to 
regard  these  peculiarities  as  abnormalities  with  which 
nature  has  afflicted  us — not  as  crimes  for  which  their  pos 
sessor  should  be  held  responsible. 

In  the  case  of  Poe,  not  only  were  the  degenerative 
changes  that  time  brings  added  to  hereditary  peculiar 
ities,  but  alcohol  had  hastened  this  degeneration  until  a 
time  came  when,  even  without  its  use,  abnormal  mental 
states  were  of  frequent  occurrence.  Poe  realized  the  fate 
that  awaited  him,  and  saw  the  44 dragon  at  the  bottom  of 
the  well."  Mrs.  Whitman  repeats  a  confession  of  his  which 
gives  us  the  key : 

I  have  absolutely  no  pleasure  in  the  stimulants  in  which  I  some 
times  so  madly  indulge.  It  has  not  been  in  the  pursuit  of  pleasure  that 
I  have  periled  life  and  reputation  and  reason.  It  has  been  a  desperate 
attempt  to  escape  from  torturing  memories. 

If  there  were  "memories,"  they  were  of  pre-natal  inheri 
tance.  Poe  was  not  an  alienist  who  could  make  a  differen 
tial  diagnosis  between  melancholy  and  melancholia.  He 
suffered,  he  knew  not  why.  That  he  could  not  overcome 
his  morbid  inheritance  is  not  a  matter  for  blame.  He  made 
repeated  and  heroic  struggles  against  the  evil  that  ob 
sessed  him.  He  manfully  resisted  the  alcoholic  craving  and 
it  left  him  for  long  periods  of  time,  as  is  the  law  of  this 
disease ;  when  it  did  overwhelm  him,  there  was  no  denying 
the  demand  it  made. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        93 

It  must  be  remembered  that  in  the  life  history  of  those 
who  suffer  from  dipsomania,  in  addition  to  the  craving  for 
alcohol  there  are  periods  of  both  elation  and  depression. 
Often  visionary  schemes  are  undertaken  without  cor 
responding  capacity  to  understand  their  real  difficulties 
or  impracticabilities.  This  is  probably  the  explanation 
of  Poe's  determination  to  found  a  journal  for  the  utterance 
of  his  individual  opinions.  He  had  failed  in  every  journal 
istic  attempt  that  required  concentrated  and  long-con 
tinued  effort.  He  had  found  by  many  bitter  experiences 
that  he  could  not  continue  for  any  long  period  of  time  with 
out  an  intercurrent  attack  of  his  hereditary  malady  which 
would  incapacitate  him  for  weeks  or  months ;  yet,  to  the 
very  last,  this  idea  of  founding  a  magazine  "for  freer  ex 
pression"  haunted  him.  And  on  what  magazine  did  he 
work  that  he  did  not  express  his  individual  opinions  ?  After 
editing  the  leading  journals  of  Philadelphia  and  New  York, 
it  was  tempting  the  risibilities  to  undertake  a  "Literary 
Arbiter"  at  Oquawka,  in  the  then  unsettled  State  of 
Illinois. 

Although  Poe's  reputation  had  so  greatly  grown  that  all 
magazines  and  periodicals  were  opened  to  him  at  remuner 
ative  prices,  he  delayed  publishing  his  magnum  opus,  "a 
book  on  American  literature  generally"  to  be  named  'The 
Authors  of  America,"  and  was  contented  with  a  few  re 
views  and  descriptive  stories. 

He  wrote : 

*I  am  so  busy  now,  and  feel  so  full  of  energy.  Engagements  to  write 
are  pouring  in  upon  me  every  day.  I  had  two  proposals  last  week  from 
Boston.  I  sent  yesterday  a  contribution  to  the  'American  Review' 
about  Critics  and  Criticism.  Not  long  ago  I  sent  one  to  the  'Metro 
politan'  called Landors  Cottage:  it  has  something  about  Annie  in  it, 
and  will  appear,  I  suppose,  in  the  March  number.  To  the  'So.  Lit. 
Messenger'  I  have  sent  fifty  pages  of  Marginalia,  five  pages  to 
appear  each  month  of  the  current  year.  I  have  also  made  permanent 
engagements  with  every  magazine  in  America  (except  'Peterson's 


94        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

National')   including  a  Cincinnati  magazine,  called  the   'Gentle 
man's'. 

While  these  statements  may  in  a  way  be  regarded  as 
* 'expansive/'  and  are  characteristic  of  those  alternating 
states  of  exaltation  and  depression  from  which  Poe  suf 
fered,  there  was  truth  in  them. 

Poe  did  not  realize  that  his  opportunity  had  come  too 
late,  and  that  he  no  longer  had  the  capacity  to  deliver. 

Landors  Cottage  and  its  near  relation,  The  Domain  of 
Arnheim,  are  the  best  works  of  this  period.  Poe,  mentally 
diseased,  was  more  capable  of  such  descriptive  work  than 
any  of  his  normal  contemporaries. 

Poe's  apparent  return  to  health  and  his  prospect  of 
independence  were  not  of  long  duration.  Early  in  1849 

he  relapsed. 

>v^___ 

Mrs.  Clemm  wrote: 

I  thought  he  would  die  several  times.  God  knows  I  wish  we  were 
both  dead  and  in  our  graves.  It  would  I  am  sure  be  far  better. 

Poe  wrote  to  Mrs.  Whitman : 

My  sadness  is  unaccountable,  and  this  makes  me  the  more  sad.  I 
am  full  of  forebodings.  Nothing  cheers  or  comforts  me.  My  life  seems 
wasted — the  future  looks  a  dreary  blank. 

This  letter  contains  a  possible  key  to  the  "solution"  of 
Poe's  personal  equation.  It  is  as  typical  of  his  abnormal 
mental  state  as  the  one  previously  quoted. 

Poe  again  had  visions  of  a  new  magazine,  and  this  time 
it  was  with  a  man  from  Oquawka.  Actual  business  ar 
rangements  were  entered  into  and  money  was  advanced 
for  its  publication.  In  an  effort  to  raise  funds  for  his  share 
in  this  enterprise,  Poe  undertook  a  lecture  tour ;  but  his 
departure  from  Fordham  was  delayed  by  a  serious  attack 
of  depression  which  temporarily  unfitted  him  for  all 
attempts  of  a  literary  character.  Either  he  had  a  presenti- 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        95 

ment,  or  his  condition  was  such  that  he  believed  death 
was  near. 

Poe  produced  nothing  after  the  year  1845,  when  he  was 
thirty-four  years  of  age,  that  materially  added  to  his  lit 
erary  reputation ;  yet  one  contributor  to  his  Baltimore 
Memorial,  naively  lamenting  his  death,  said: 

But  the  tragedy  of  Poe's  death  is  too  deep  for  words  of  mine.  He 
was  only  thirty-nine  years  old.  His  best  work  ought  to  have  been  be 
fore  him.  Who  can  compute  the  loss  to  our  literature  by  his  untimely 
death? 

We  know  that,  as  the  cells  that  line  the  leaves,  and  that 
boil  down  and  prepare  for  absorption  the  raw  juices  ex 
tracted  from  the  ground  by  the  roots,  slowly  fill  with  cal 
careous  incrustations,  so  do  the  arteries  of  the  human 
brain  harden,  and  the  cells  cease  actively  to  function  or 
are  absorbed.  We  call  this  process  arterio-sclerosis  and 
its  result  is  old  age  which,  in  some,  is  delayed ;  to  others  it 
comes  comparatively  early  in  life.  For  this  reason  it  is  dif 
ficult  to  judge  a  man's  age  by  the  number  of  years  he  has 
lived.  From  this  comes  the  axiomatic  deduction,  "a  man 
is  only  as  old  as  his  arteries."  This  so-called  "hardening  of 
the  arteries"  begins,  in  all  of  us,  soon  after  reaching  middle 
life :  it  becomes  a  disease  only  when  unduly  hastened. 

Poe  abandoned  his  home  at  Fordham  and  spent  his  last 
night  in  New  York  at  the  home  of  Mrs.  Lewis.  She  thus 
describes  his  condition : 

He  seemed  very  sad  and  retired  early.  On  leaving  next  morning, 
he  took  my  hands  in  his  and,  looking  into  my  face  said,  'Dear  Stella, 
my  much  beloved  friend,  you  truly  understand  and  appreciate  me.  I 
have  a  presentiment  that  I  never  shall  see  you  again.  I  must  leave 
today  for  Richmond.  If  I  never  return  write  my  life.  You  can  and  will 
do  me  justice/ 

From  New  York  Poe  took  a  boat  for  Philadelphia.  For 
the  last  time  he  saw  Mrs.  Clernm  and  she  thus  records  his 
farewell  promise : 


%        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

God  bless  you,  my  own  darling  mother.  Do  not  fear  for  your  Eddy. 
See  how  good  I  will  be  while  I  am  away  from  you,  and  will  come  back 
to  love  and  comfort  you. 

Two  days  later  Poe  called  at  JohnSartain'soffice  in  Phil 
adelphia,  suffering  from  a  pronounced  mental  disturbance. 
He  had  delusions  of  persecution  and  believed  that  he  was 
being  followed  by  enemies  who  were  attempting  his 
destruction.  Woodberry,  quoting  Sartain,  thus  describes 
his  condition : 

Poe  went  to  Philadelphia,  and,  apparently  after  a  day  or  two, 
entered  the  office  of  John  Sartain,  proprietor  of  'Sartain's  Magazine,' 
his  friend  for  the  past  nine  years,  and  exclaimed  excitedly,  'I  have 
come  to  you  for  refuge.'  He  was  delirious  and  suffering  from  what 
seems  to  have  been  an  habitual  delusion  in  such  attacks,  a  fear  of  a 
conspiracy  against  him.  Sartain,  who  long  remembered  the  visions 
about  which  Poe  raved  and  the  persistence  with  which  he  besought 
him  for  laudanum,  reassured  him,  and  cared  for  him  some  days,  accom 
panied  him  when  he  went  out,  and  brought  him  back;  once  Poe 
escaped  and  seems  to  have  passed  that  night  in  an  open  field,  but  Sar 
tain  told  the  story  with  variations  at  different  times;  toward  the  end 
two  other  old  friends  assisted  in  caring  for  him. 

John  Sartain,  the  artist,  in  his  "Reminiscences  of  a  Very 
Old  Man,"  published  in  1900,  recalled  certain  facts  of 
his  association  with  Poe.  Apparently  he  was  one  of  the  few 
friends  who  actively  assisted  Poe  during  his  last  sickness, 
and  he  was  familiar  with  the  morbid  nervous  state  that 
preceded  Poe's  death. 

Sartain,  describing  this  interview  with  Poe,  writes : 
'Mr.  Sartain,  I  have  come  to  you  for  refuge  and  protection;  will 
you  let  me  stay  with  you?  It  is  necessary  for  my  safety  that  I  lie  con 
cealed  for  a  time.'  He  said  it  would  be  difficult  for  me  to  believe  what 
he  had  to  tell,  or  that  such  things  were  possible  in  this  nineteenth 
century.  .  .  .  He  told  me  that  he  had  been  on  his  way  to  New  York, 
but  he  had  heard  some  men  who  sat  a  few  seats  back  of  him  plotting 
how  they  should  kill  him  and  then  throw  him  off  from  the  platform  of 
the  car.  He  said  they  spoke  so  low  that  it  would  have  been  impossible 
for  him  to  hear  and  understand  the  meaning  of  their  words,  had  it  not 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        97 

been  that  his  sense  of  hearing  was  so  wonderfully  acute.  .  .  .  From 
his  fear  of  assassination  his  mind  gradually  veered  around  to  an  idea 
of  self-destruction,  and  his  words  clearly  indicated  this  tendency.  .  .  . 
After  a  long  silence  he  said  suddenly,  'If  this  mustache  of  mine  was 
removed  I  should  not  be  so  easily  recognized;  will  you  lend  me  a 
razor,  that  I  may  shave  it  off?' 

He  also  related  to  Sartain  his  Moyamensing  hallucina 
tions,  and  he  suffered  from  other  delusions  characteristic 
of  the  alcoholic  delirium  that  unquestionably  was  the  basis 
of  his  mental  state. 

Sartain  says : 

He  said  that  he  had  been  thrown  in  Moyamensing  Prison  for 
forging  a  check  and  while  there  a  white  female  figure  had  appeared  on 
the  battlements  and  had  addressed  him  in  whispers.  *  If  I  had  not  heard 
what  she  said/  he  declared,  *it  would  have  been  the  end  of  me/ 

'An  attendant  asked  me  if  I  would  like  to  take  a  stroll  about  the 
place.  I  might  see  something  interesting  and  I  agreed.  In  the  course  of 
our  rounds  on  the  ramparts  we  saw  a  cauldron  of  burning  spirits.  He 
asked  me  if  I  would  not  like  to  take  a  drink.  I  declined,  but,  had  I 
said  yes,  I  should  have  been  lifted  over  the  brim  and  dipped  into  the 
hot  liquid,  up  to  the  lips  like  Tantalus.  .  .  .  So  at  last  as  a  means  to 
torture  rne  and  to  wring  my  heart,  they  brought  out  my  mother, 
Mrs.  Clemm,  to  blast  my  sight  by  seeing  them  first  saw  off  her  feet 
to  the  ankles,  then  her  legs  to  the  knees,  her  thighs  at  the  hips/ 

On  the  second  morning  he  appeared  to  have  become  so  much  like 
his  old  self  that  I  trusted  him  to  go  out  alone.  After  an  hour  or  two  he 
returned,  and  then  told  me  that  he  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
what  I  said  was  true,  and  that  the  whole  thing  was  a  delusion.  He  said 
his  mind  began  to  clear  as  he  laid  on  the  grass.  While  he  lay  thus  the 
words  he  had  heard  kept  running  in  his  thoughts,  but  he  tried  in  vain 
to  connect  them  with  the  speaker,  and  so  the  light  gradually  broke  in 
on  his  dazed  mind  and  he  saw  that  he  had  come  out  of  a  dream. 

Woodberry,  without  justification,  has  aspersed  Sartain's 
memory  of  these  events.  The  nature  of  Poe's  delusions 
and  hallucinations  was  such  as  to  give  evidence  of  their 
truth.  The  suddenness  of  so  serious  an  attack  following  the 
brief  period  of  intoxication  makes  it  most  probable  that 
the  congested  state  of  Poe's  brain  was  primarily  respon- 


98        POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

sible,  although  the  nature  of  his  mental  symptoms  is 
characteristic  of  delirium  tremens.  Insanity  is  not  so 
precipitate  either  in  its  onset  or  in  its  recovery,  such  con 
dition  continuing,  as  a  rule,  for  many  weeks. 

Sartain  also  bears  testimony  as  to  the  small  amount  of 
intoxicant  required  to  produce  mental  disturbance.  He 
states  that  Poe  was  most  easily  overcome  by  even 
minute  doses  of  alcohol  and  he  relates  conversations  with 
Miss  Clarke,  who  was  on  terms  of  intimacy  with  the  Poe 
family,  and  whose  father,  T.  C.  Clarke,  was  his  "Stylus" 
associate,  to  the  effect  that  "Miss  Clarke  quotes  her 
father  as  saying  that  'it  took  less  liquor  to  make  a  maniac 
of  Poe  than  of  any  one  he  had  ever  known'." 

The  length  of  time  that  had  elapsed  after  Poe  left  Ford- 
ham  before  he  was  found  in  this  condition  of  delirium,  is 
uncertain;  yet  it  is  necessary  to  know  this  in  order  that  his 
disease  may  be  properly  diagnosed. 

I  f  Poe  was  normal  when  he  left  New  York,  and  his  mother, 
who  watched  over  him  so  carefully,  believed  that  he  was 
in  condition  to  start  on  a  lecturing  tour,  this  delirium  could 
not  have  been  the  result  of  only  two  day's  use  of  alcohol. 
There  must  have  been  an  organic  brain  change  for  alco 
hol  to  have  acted  so  quickly.  Even  without  the  use  of 
any  stimulant,  this  condition  occasionally  develops.  We 
could  possibly  dignify  it  by  the  name  of  Melancholia, 
the  preceding  state  having  been  a  Melancholy.  Whatever 
name  we  use,  the  indisputable  fact  remains  that  there 
was  an  organic  congestion  of  the  meninges  of  the  brain. 
This  condition  could  not  have  been  altogether  due  to  alco 
hol.  It  often  does  happen  that  after  a  prolonged  debauch 
delirium  tremens  results,  characterized  by  all  the  symp 
toms  Poe's  condition  presented,  but  this  comes  only  after 
an  extended  period  of  acute  alcoholism,  save  in  those  cases 
where  there  has  developed  an  organic  cerebral  degener 
ation.  The  opinion  that  it  was  due  to  an  organc  lesion 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        99 

is  strengthened  by  a  communication  made  by  Poe's  cousin, 
Neilson  Poe,  who  was  present  at  Poe's  death.  He  wrote : 

The  history  of  the  last  few  days  of  his  life  is  known  to  no  one  so 
well  as  to  myself.  ...  I  trust  that  I  can  demonstrate  that  he  passed, 
by  a  single  indulgence,  from  a  condition  of  perfect  sobriety  to  one  bor 
dering  on  the  madness  usually  occasioned  by  long  continued  intoxica 
tion,  and  that  he  is  entitled  to  a  far  more  favorable  judgment  upon  his 
last  hours  than  he  has  received. 

It  is  possible  that  a  much  longer  period  than  has  been 
estimated  elapsed  between  Poe's  leaving  New  York  and  his 
call  upon  Sartain.  Woodberry  puts  it  at  a  "day  or  two." 

Such  hallucinations  are  most  frequent  in  delirium;  the 
memory  of  the  prison  was  as  much  a  delusion  as  the  hear 
ing  of  a  voice  and  the  sight  of  a  "white  female  figure"  were 
hallucinations.  Poe  recovered  from  this  attack,  and  spent 
some  weeks  in  Richmond  among  his  friends.  He  was  kindly 
received  and  extensively  entertained.  His  letters,  however, 
show  that  he  had  not  yet  recovered. 

Oh,  my  darling  mother,  it  is  now  three  weeks  since  I  saw  you,  and 
in  all  that  time,  your  poor  Eddy  has  scarcely  drawn  a  breath  except  of 
intense  agony.  Perhaps  you  are  sick  or  gone  from  Fordham  in  despair, 
or  dead.  .  .  .  Oh,  Mother,  I  am  so  ill  while  I  write —  .  .  .  My  valise 
was  lost  for  ten  days.  At  last  I  found  it  at  the  depot  in  Philadelphia, 
but  they  had  opened  it  and  stolen  both  lectures.  All  my  object  here  is 
over  unless  I  can  recover  them  or  rewrite  one  of  them. 

In  another  letter,  written  to  Mrs.  Clemm  shortly  after 
this,  he  says : 

You  will  see  at  once  by  the  handwriting  of  this  letter,  that  I  am 
better — much  better — in  health  and  spirits.  Oh  if  you  knew  how  your 
dear  letter  comforted  me!  It  acted  like  magic.  Most  of  rny  sufferings 
arose  from  that  terrible  idea  which  I  could  not  get  rid  of — the  idea 
that  you  were  dead.  For  more  than  ten  days  I  was  totally  deranged, 
although  I  was  not  drinking  one  drop;  and  during  this  interval  I 
imagined  the  most  horrible  calamities. 

In  spite  of  Poe's  denials,  alcohol  probably  precipitated 
this  attack.  Alcohol  alone  could  not  have  produced  such 


100      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

hallucinations  and  delusions  unless  it  had  been  continued 
two  or  three  weeks,  or  had  there  not  been,  as  a  basis,  a 
diseased  cerebrum. 

An  opiate  could  not  have  produced  this  condition.  We 
know  of  no  better  drug  in  melancholia — no  matter  how 
produced — than  cumulative  doses  of  opium. 

In  these  diseased  brain  cells  there  is  set  up  an  abnormal 
brain  psychology,  the  exact  nature  of  which  is  still  a 
matter  of  guesswork  among  psycho-pathologists. 

At  all  events  this  changed  mentality  is  accompanied, 
and  I  believe  is  caused,  by  excessive  circulation  of  the 
blood  in  the  brain,  exciting  both  the  centers  of  the  special 
senses  and  the  cells  presiding  over  ideation.  These  tech 
nical  explanations  have  no  value  further  than  as  an  aid  in 
clearing  up  the  condition  of  Poe  at  the  time  of  his  death. 

Letters  of  Poe,  written  about  this  time,  throw  further 
light  upon  his  mental  condition : 

My  dear,  dear  Mother — I  have  been  so  ill — have  had  the  cholera, 
or  spasms  quite  as  bad,  and  can  now  hardly  hold  the  pen. 

The  very  instant  you  get  this  come  to  me.  The  joy  of  seeing  you 
will  almost  compensate  for  our  sorrows.  We  can  but  die  together.  It  is 
no  use  to  reason  with  me  now ;  I  must  die.  I  have  no  desire  to  live  since 
I  have  done  Eureka.  I  could  accomplish  nothing  more.  For  your  sake  it 
would  be  sweet  to  live,  but  we  must  die  together.  You  have  been  all  in 
all  to  me,  darling,  ever  beloved  Mother,  and  dearest  truest  friend 

I  was  never  really  insane,  except  on  occasions  where  my  heart  was 
touched.  I  have  been  taken  to  prison  once  since  I  came  here  for  getting 
drunk.  But  then  I  was  not,  it  was  about  Virginia. 

Fortunately,  Mrs.  Clemm  was  far  away  at  the  time 
these  thoughts,  as  here  expressed,  dominated  Poe.  Pos 
sibly  many  times  before,  while  Mrs.  Clemm  was  in  active 
attendance  upon  him,  these  same  ideas  came  to  him. 
If  so,  she  was  in  real  danger.  Homicidal  mania  such  as  this, 
especially  when  due  to  alcoholism,  has  not  infrequently 
cost  the  lives  not  only  of  the  patient  but  of  those  he  loved 
and  who  most  tenderly  ministered  to  his  needs. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      W\ 

It  was  during  these  Richmond  days  that  Poe  again  met, 
wooed,  and  won  Mrs.  Shelton.  At  this  same  time  he  was 
arranging  with  Patterson  for  the  Oquawka  magazine. 
Evidently  no  suspicion  of  approaching  death  was  disturb 
ing  him.  It  is  probable  that  a  temporary  expansive  state 
was  alternating  with  the  depression  from  which  he  had 
been  suffering. 

Mrs.  Weiss  writes : 

The  knowledge  of  this  weakness  was  by  his  own  request  concealed 
from  me.  All  that  I  knew  of  the  matter  was  when  a  friend  informed  me 
that  'Mr.  Poe  was  too  unwell  to  see  us  that  evening.'  .  .  .  On  the  day 
following  he  made  his  appearance  among  us,  but  so  pale,  tremulous, 
and  apparently  subdued  as  to  convince  me  that  he  had  been  seriously 
ill.  On  this  occasion  he  had  been  at  the  'Old  Swan,'  where  he  was  care 
fully  tended  by  Mrs.  Mackenzie's  family,  but  on  a  second  and  more 
serious  relapse  he  was  taken  by  Dr.  Mackenzie  and  Dr.  Gibbon  Carter 
to  Duncan  Lodge,  where  during  some  days  his  life  was  in  imminent 
danger.  Assiduous  attention  saved  him,  but  it  was  the  opinion  of  the 
physicians  that  another  such  attack  would  prove  fatal.  .  .  .  Dr. 
Carter  relates  how,  on  this  occasion,  he  had  a  long  conversation  with 
him,  in  which  Poe  expressed  the  most  earnest  desire  to  break  from  the 
thralldom  of  his  besetting  sin,  and  told  of  his  many  unavailing  struggles 
to  do  so. 

Poe,  in  spite  of  these  repeated  attacks,  was  seriously 
considering  marriage  with  Mrs.  Shelton,  but  before  he 
took  this  step  he  wished  to  bring  Mrs.  Clemm  from 
New  York.  Again  he  ventured  forth  alone.  No  one  can 
trace  his  movements  from  the  time  he  left  Richmond,  in 
his  effort  to  reach  New  York,  until  he  was  found  insensi 
ble  on  the  water  front  of  Baltimore.  In  this  condition  he 
was  removed  to  the  Washington  University  Hospital, 
under  the  charge  of  Dr.  J.  J.  Moran,  where,  on  October  7, 
1849,  he  died. 

On  his  way  north  he  stopped  at  Baltimore.  Woodberry 
thus  narrates  the  essential  facts : 

Just  as  when  in  the  summer  of  1847  at  Philadelphia  he  was  saved 
by  a  friend,  just  as  when  in  the  summer  of  1848  at  Boston  he  was 


102      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 


saved  by  a  friend,  just  as  in  the  summer  of  1 849  he  was  saved  by  Burr, 
he  had  experienced  one  of  those  repeated  attacks,  worse  at  each  re 
turn,  and  he  had  found  no  friend  by  to  save  him. 

That  Poe  should  have  died  alone  and  unfriended, 
deprived  of  the  faithful  nursing  and  devoted  care  that, 
on  former  occasions,  had  been  given  him  by  the  woman 
he  delighted  to  call  "Dear,  Dear  Muddy,"  has  proved  a 
disastrous  end  to  a  life  filled  with  misfortunes ;  and  on  his 
memory  it  has  left  an  undeserved  stain  that  years  have 
deepened.  This  circumstance  has  been  used  by  his  enemies 
as  proof  of  his  profligate  living  and  as  the  culminating 
evidence  of  a  misspent  life.  Those  who  feared  and  hated 
him  rejoiced,  not  only  at  the  fact,  but  at  the  manner  of 
his  death. 

Otherwise,  no  other  name  save  that  of  Virginia  would 
have  been  connected  with  Poe's  and  he  might  have  passed 
into  history  as  a  shining  example  of  connubial  happiness 
that  death  itself  could  not  dissever  and  the  picture  Harri 
son  drew  of  Poe's  mental  sufferings,  due  to  the  death  of 
Virginia,  might  have  seemed  to  have  had  a  better  founda 
tion  in  fact.  Death  would  also  have  saved  the  poor  old 
mother,  who  was  so  willing  to  sacrifice  all  personal  feel 
ing,  the  agony  of  anticipating  a  marriage  feast  set  out 
with  cold  meats  and  decorated  with  cypress  boughs.  A 
few  days  later  she  was  summoned  to  a  different  ceremony : 
abject  poverty  prevented  even  this  journey. 

Two  weeks  after  Poe's  death,  his  physician,  Dr.  Moran, 
wrote  a  fairly  complete  account  of  the  facts  of  his  death 
and  described,  with  sufficient  detail,  its  essential  features. 

When  Poe  was  taken  to  the  hospital  he  was  uncon 
scious  and  remained  in  that  condition  from  five  o'clock  in 
the  afternoon  until  three  on  the  following  morning. 

To  this  state  succeeded  tremor  of  the  limbs,  and  at  first  a  busy  but 
not  violent  or  active  delirium — constant  talking  and  vacant  con 
verse  with  spectral  and  imaginary  objects  on  the  walls.  His  face  was 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      103 

pale  and  his  whole  person  drenched  in  perspiration.  We  were  unable  to 
induce  tranquility  before  the  second  day  after  his  admission.  Having 
left  orders  with  the  nurses  to  that  effect,  I  was  summoned  to  his  bed 
side  so  soon  as  consciousness  supervened  and  questioned  him  with  ref 
erence  to  his  family,  his  place  of  residence,  relatives,  etc.  But  his 
answers  were  incoherent  and  unsatisfactory.  He  told  me,  however, 
that  he  had  a  wife  in  Richmond  (which  I  have  since  learned  was  not 
the  fact),  that  he  did  not  know  when  he  had  left  the  city  nor  what  had 
become  of  his  trunk  of  clothing.  .  .  .  Mr.  Poe  seemed  to  doze,  and  I 
left  him  a  short  time.  When  I  returned  I  found  him  in  a  violent  delir 
ium,  resisting  the  efforts  of  two  nurses  to  keep  him  in  bed.  This  state 
continued  till  Saturday  evening  (he  was  admitted  on  Wednesday), 
when  he  commenced  calling  for  one  'Reynolds',  which  he  did  through 
the  night  until  three  on  Sunday  morning.  At  this  time  a  very  decided 
change  began  to  affect  him.  Having  become  enfeebled  from  exertion, 
he  became  quiet  and  seemed  to  rest  for  a  short  time ;  then  gently  mov 
ing  his  head,  he  said  'Lord  help  my  poor  soul',  and  expired. 

This  is  a  simple  and  clear  medical  history.  While  it  con 
tains  nothing  that  might  hurt  the  mother,  it  does  not 
attempt  to  minimize  or  explain  away  Poe's  real  condition 
on  entrance,  or  to  deny  the  delusions  and  hallucinations 
from  which  he  suffered.  It  is  an  intelligent  statement  cov 
ering  the  details  of  a  death  due  to  brain  inflammation,  or 
engorgement. 

It  is  unfortunate  that  Moran,  in  again  writing  on  this 
subject,  depended  on  his  "senile  memories/'  If  any  mem 
ory  ever  needed  refreshing  it  was  his,  for,  some  thirty-five 
years  later,  he  wrote  another  account  which  in  no  particu 
lar  corresponds  with  the  earlier  one.  In  1885,  Dr.  Moran 
published  his  much  discussed  "Defense  of  Edgar  Allan 
Poe,"  giving  the  "Life,  Character  and  Dying  Declaration  of 
the  Poet." 

Dr.  Moran's  "Defense"  contains  nothing  that  aids  us 
in  arriving  at  an  understanding  of  Poe's  mental  state 
upon  admission  to  the  hospital  nor  the  cause  of  his  death. 
On  the  other  hand  it  confuses  because  the  details  as 
remembered  thirty-six  years  after  Poe's  death  materially 


104      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

differ  from  the  report  sent  to  Mrs.  Clemm  a  few  days 
after  he  died.  The  latter  was  a  direct  and  simple  state 
ment  of  the  facts  without  attempt  at  either  extenuation 
or  undue  explanation ;  the  former  was  impressionistic  and 
reflects  the  halo  of  martyrdom  and  legend  already  col 
lecting  around  the  name  of  Poe.  It  is  essentially  a  defense 
and  admits  no  fact  that  might  dim  the  memory  of  Poe. 
The  name,  in  every  mention  of  it,  is  capitalized,  thus 
exhibiting  the  intense  reverence  in  which  the  memory  of 
his  hero  was  held. 

EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  has  been  more  misunderstood  than  any 
other  poet  of  the  recent  past.  While  his  life  was  beautiful  and  inspired, 
yet  aspersed,  his  last  moments  had  more  of  sublimity  than  that  of  any 
of  his  contemporaries.  The  author  of  gems  so  delicate  as  Annabel  Lee, 
The  Raven,  and  Lenore,  while  no  less  human  and  frail  than  others  of 
his  day,  had  a  soul  and  heart  that  stamped  him  an  offshoot  of  Divin 
ity. 

Much  has  been  said  and  written  in  relation  to  this  singular  and 
most  remarkable  of  all  our  poets,  whose  life  has  been  an  enigma  to  the 
world  and  whose  death  a  mystery.  The  nature  of  his  disease  and  how 
he  died,  up  to  the  present  day,  remains  a  matter  of  doubt  except  so  far 
as  have  been  gathered  from  a  few  brief  voluntary  publications  made 
by  his  physician.  .  .  .  Without  vanity  permit  me  to  say  I  firmly  be 
lieve  that  had  they  called  upon  me  for  statements  as  to  when  he  died, 
I  could  have  been  instrumental  in  preventing  his  'Dear  Muddie,'  Mrs. 
Maria  Clemm,  and  his  dear  affianced,  Mrs.  Shelton,  his  first  love,  his 
Annabel  Lee — from  the  sore  afflictions  and  trials  and  heart  burning 
that  fell  to  their  lot,  and  which  in  silence  they  endured.  .  .  .  Time 
speeds  on  and  I  repeat  that  thirty-five  years  have  passed,  and  at  this 
late  period  I  am  invited  and  urged  to  make  known  the  facts  so  long 
desired  in  reference  to  his  death.  I  am  grateful  to  a  kind  Providence 
for  having  spared  me  to  give  the  positive  facts  and  unfold  to  the  public 
mind  much  that  had  not  been  made  known,  and  I  hope  to  remove  all 
doubt  in  respect  to  the  uncertainty  which  has  so  long  surrounded  this 
part  of  POE'S  history  and  life.  I  now  proclaim  to  the  world  that  he  has 
been  shamefully  abused  and  misrepresented,  that  the  habit  of  intem 
perance,  which  to  some  extent  did  cling  to  him  in  his  earlier  history, 
did  not  continue  with  him  in  his  more  mature  life,  and  that  what  I 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      105 

shall  record,  shall  be  a  true,  unvarnished  story  from  personal  inter 
course  for  sixteen  hours  during  his  last  illness,  from  his  death-bed 
statements,  from  information  received  elsewhere,  and  from  near  and 
dear  friends,  those  who  knew  him  and  loved  him. 

It  was  my  sad  duty  as  his  physician  to  sit  by  his  deathbed;  to  ad 
minister  the  cup  of  consolation;  to  moisten  his  parched  lips;  to  wipe 
the  cold  death-dew  from  his  brow ;  and  to  catch  the  last  whispered  ar 
ticulations  that  fell  from  the  lips  of  a  being,  the  most  remarkable,  per 
haps,  this  country  has  ever  known.  Let  me  entreat  your  thoughtful 
attention,  therefore,  to  a  plain,  unvarnished  story  of  a  checkered  life, 
and  the  strange  and  melancholy  events  that  darkened  the  last  hours 
of  a  dying  genius. 

"A  tale  I  would  unfold" — but,  unfortunately,  he  had 
unfolded  it  some  thirty-six  years  before,  and  apparently 
had  forgotten  to  refold  it.  The  report  he  now  makes  is  so 
diametrically  opposed  to  that  contained  in  a  letter  to 
Mrs.  Clemm  immediately  following  Poe's  death,  that  we 
must  believe,  influenced  by  his  subject  and  entirely  for 
getting  the  facts,  he  has  drawn  up  a  story  of  "ratioci 
nation"  in  an  attempt  to  associate  his  own  name  with  that 
of  the  immortal  dead. 

It  is  not  a  deliberate  attempt  to  deceive;  simply  time  had 
filled  Moran's  brain  cells  with  "lime,"  and  many  of  them 
had  been  absorbed.  It  is  not  to  be  believed  that  Dr.  Moran 
actually  sat  for  sixteen  hours  wiping  the  "death-dew" 
from  the  arched  brow,  or  that  he  administered  any  cup  of 
consolation,  or  even  moistened  the  parched  lips ;  this  is  all 
Southern  hyperbole.  It  is  what  Moran  might  have  done 
had  Poe  come  back  after  thirty-five  years  with  all  his  accu 
mulated  legends  and  his  glorious  reputation.  Probably,  as  he 
related  thirty-six  years  earlier — not  knowing  who  Poe  was, 
he  turned  him  over  to  a  nurse.  His  thirty-six-year-after 
statement,  as  far  as  it  concerns  the  death  of  Poe,  begins 
with  a  diagnosis  given  by  the  hackdriver  that  brought  the 
dying  man  to  the  hospital : 


106      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

4  Where  did  you  find  this  man?'  'On  Light  Street  wharf,  sir/  I  said, 
'dead  drunk  I  suppose?'  He  replied,  'No,  sir;  he  was  a  sick  man,  a  very 
sick  man  sir.'  Why  do  you  think  he  was  not  drunk?'  I  asked.  'He  did 
not  smell  of  whiskey,'  said  the  driver,  'he  is  too  white  in  the  face.  I 
picked  him  up  in  my  arms  like  a  baby,  sir,  and  put  him  in  the  hack.' 

Little  did  I  then  think,  that  after  thirty-five  years  I  should  be 
called  upon  to  give  a  full  account  of  POE'S  death  and  to  defend  the 
man  whom  at  that  hour  I  believed  to  be  drunk;  and  that  man,  the 
great  American  genius,  whose  name  is  now  a  household  word. 

In  a  few  minutes  POE  threw  the  cover  from  his  breast,  and  look 
ing  up  asked  the  nurse,  'Where  am  I  ?'  The  nurse  made  no  reply  but 
rang  for  me.  I  attended  the  call  immediately,  and  placing  my  chair  by 
the  side  of  the  patient's  bed,  took  his  left  hand  in  my  own  and  with  my 
right  hand  pushed  back  the  raven  black  locks  of  hair  that  covered  his 
forehead. 

I  asked  him  how  he  felt.  He  answered,  'Miserable.'  'Do  you  suffer 
much  pain?'  'No.'  'Do  you  feel  sick  at  the  stomach?'  'Yes,  slightly.' 
'Does  your  head  ache,  have  you  any  pain  there?'  putting  my  hand  on 
his  forehead.  'Yes.'  'Mr.  POE,  how  long  have  you  been  sick?'  'Can't 
say.'  .  .  . 

The  sick  man  said,  'Where  am  I  ?'  'You  are  in  the  hands  of  your 
friends,'  I  replied,  'and  as  soon  as  you  are  better,  I  will  have  you  moved 
to  another  part  of  the  house,  where  you  can  receive  them.'  He  was 
looking  the  room  over  with  his  large  dark  eyes,  and  I  feared  he  would 
think  he  was  unkindly  dealt  with,  by  being  put  in  this  prison-like 
room,  with  its  wired  inside  windows,  and  iron  grating  outside. 

I  now  felt  it  necessary  that  I  should  determine  the  nature  of  his 
disease  and  make  out  a  correct  diagnosis,  so  as  to  treat  him  properly. 
I  did  not  then  know  but  he  might  have  been  drinking,  and  so  as  to 
determine  the  matter  I  said : 

'Mr.  POE,  you  are  extremely  weak,  pulse  very  low;  I  will  give  you 
a  glass  of  toddy.'  He  opened  wide  his  eyes,  and  fixed  them  so  steadily 
upon  me,  and  with  such  anguish  in  them  that  I  had  to  look  from  him 
to  the  wall  beyond  the  bed. 

He  then  said,  4Sir,  if  I  thought  its  potency  would  transport  me 
to  the  Elysian  bowers  of  the  undiscovered  spirit  world,  I  would  not 
take  it.' 

'I  will  then  administer  an  opiate,  to  give  you  sleep  and  rest,'  I 
said.  Then  he  rejoined,  Twin  sister,  spectre  to  the  doomed  and  crazed 
mortals  of  earth  and  perdition.' 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      107 

I  was  entirely  shorn  of  my  strength.  Here  was  a  patient  supposed 
to  have  been  drunk,  and  yet  refuses  to  take  liquor.  ...  I  found  there 
was  no  tremor  of  his  person,  no  unsteadiness  of  his  nerves,  no  fidgeting 
with  his  hands,  and  not  the  slightest  odor  of  liquor  upon  his  breath  or 
person.  I  saw  that  my  first  impression  had  been  a  mistaken  one.  He 
was  in  a  sinking  condition,  yet  perfectly  conscious. 

Dr.  Moran's  account  shows  a  marvelous  memory  for 
verbatim  statements  and  minute  details  of  events  which 
had  occurred  thirty-six  years  previously;  so  circumstan 
tial  and  verbatim  were  they  that  I  am  sure  I  could  not  have 
retained  and  repeated  them  thirty-six  seconds  after  they 
were  uttered. 

This  would  be  a  trivial  and  uncalled  for  criticism  did  it 
not  concern  Dr.  Moran's  retraction  of  his  statement  made 
in  the  letter  he  wrote  Mrs.  Clemm  a  few  days  after  Poe's 
death,  while  the  facts  were  still  fresh  in  his  memory. 
According  to  this  letter  Poe  was  unconscious  when 
admitted  and  remained  unconscious  for  several  hours; 
this  was  "succeeded  by  a  tremor  of  the  limbs,  and  a 
busy  but  not  violent  delirium."  Dr.  Moran  also  wrote 
that,  when  Poe  was  questioned  with  reference  to  his 
family,  "his  answers  were  incoherent  and  unsatisfactory. 
He  told  me  however  that  he  had  a  wife  in  Richmond." 
Further,  he  stated  that  Poe  became  violently  delirious  and 
sank  into  a  stupor,  dying  without  regaining  consciousness. 
This  renders  all  the  more  remarkable  the  following  pen 
picture  in  the  "Defense"  of  Poe's  actions  as  well  as  a  report 
of  his  last  words : 

I  said,  'Mr.  POE,  you  are  in  a  critical  condition,  and  the  least  ex 
citement  of  your  mind  will  endanger  your  life.'  He  said,  'Doctor,  I  am 
ill;  is  there  no  hope?'  'The  chances  are  against  you.'  'How  long,  oh! 
how  long,'  he  cried,  'before  I  can  see  my  dear  Virginia,  my  dear  Le- 
nore!'  I  said  to  him,  'I  will  send  for  her  or  anyone  you  wish  to  see.'  I 
knew  nothing  of  his  family  or  friends.  I  asked  him,  'Have  you  a 
family?'  'No,'  said  he,  'my  wife  is  dead,  my  dear  Virginia.  My  mother- 


108      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

in-law  lives;  oh!  how  my  heart  bleeds  for  her;  she  said  when  we  last 
met  and  parted  at  Fordham,  'Eddie,  I  fear  this  will  be  our  last  meet 
ing.'  I  said,  'Mr.  POE,  I  will  send  or  write  to  anyone  you  maydesire 
me.'  'Doctor,*  said  he,  'Death's  dark  angel  has  done  his  work.  Lan 
guage  cannot  express  the  terrific  tempest  that  sweeps  over  me,  and 
signals  the  alarm  of  death.  Oh,  God!  the  terrible  strait  I  am  in.*  "Shall 
I  write  to  anyone  for  you?'  'Yes,  Doctor,  write  to  my  mother-in-law, 
and  Mrs. no,  too  late!  Too  late!' 

Then  he  said,  'Write  to  both  at  once;  write  to  my  mother-in-law 
and  tell  her  '  Eddie  is  here ' — no,  too  late !  Doctor,  I  must  unbosom  to 
you  the  secret  of  my  heart,  though  dagger-like  it  pierces  my  soul.  I 
was  to  have  been  married  in  ten  days.' 

He  wept  like  a  child,  and  even  now  I  can  see  his  pale  face  that  told 
too  plainly  the  depth  of  grief  he  felt,  and  the  large  tear  drops  forcing 
their  way  down  the  furrows  of  his  pallid  cheeks.  I  again  asked,  'Shall  I 
send  for  the  lady?'  'No,  write  to  both;  inform  them  of  my  illness  and 
death  at  the  same  time,  and  say  that  no  conscious  act  of  mine  brought 
this  great  trouble  upon  me.  How  it  happened  that  I  am  brought  to 
this  place,  God  only  knows.  My  mind  has  kept  no  record  of  time;  it 
seems  a  dream,  a  horrible  dream.'  I  said,  'Mr.  POE,  my  carriage  is  at 
the  door;  I  will  send  for  the  lady.'  'No,'  said  he,  Vrite  to  Mrs.  Sarah 
E.  Shelton,  Richmond,  Va.,  and  Mrs.  Maria  Clemm,  Lowell,  Mass.' 

I  remained  by  his  side,  watching  every  breath  and  movement  of 
his  muscles.  He  had  no  tremor  or  spasmodic  action  at  this  period,  which 
was  twelve  hours  from  his  entrance  in  the  hospital.  I  noticed  the  color 
deepening  upon  his  cheeks  and  forehead,  blood  vessels  at  the  temple 
slightly  enlarging.  I  ordered  ice  to  his  head  and  heat  to  his  extremities, 
and  waited  in  his  room  about  fifteen  minutes  longer,  observing  no 
change  except  increase  in  the  circulation.  .  .  .  POE  continued  in  an 
unconscious  state  for  half  an  hour,  but  when  roused  he  was  conscious. 
On  visiting  him  again  I  found  his  pulse  feeble,  sharp,  and  very  irregu 
lar.  I  took  my  seat  by  his  bedside  and  closely  watched  him  for  twenty 
minutes  at  least;  the  pupils  of  his  eyes  were  dilating  and  contracting. 
Death  was  rapidly  approaching.  Just  at  this  moment  my  friend,  Pro 
fessor  J.  C.  S.  Monkur,  came  into  the  sick  chamber.  As  soon  as  he  fixed 
his  eyes  upon  the  patient  he  said,  'He  will  die;  he  is  dying  now.'  After 
a  careful  examination,  Dr.  Monkur  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  POE 
would  die  from  excessive  nervous  prostration  and  loss  of  nerve  power, 
resulting  from  exposure,  affecting  the  encephalon,  a  sensitive  and  deli 
cate  membrane  of  the  brain.  ,  .  He  seemed  to  revive  a  little  and 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      109 

opening  his  eyes,  he  fixed  them  upon  the  window.  He  kept  them  un 
moved  for  more  than  a  minute.  I  have,  since  that  time,  been  forcibly 
impressed  with  the  wild  fancies  in  that  wonderful  poem,  The  Raven. 
Did  he  hear  a  'Gentle  tapping  at  the  window  lattice/  and  was  his 
heart  still  a  moment,  'this  mystery  to  explore'  ?  Did  he  see  that  stately 
raven  'perched  upon  his  chamber  door.  Perched,  and  sat,  and  nothing 
more/  The  dying  poet  was  articulating  something  in  a  very  low  voice, 
and  at  length  he  spoke  more  audibly  and  said,  'Doctor,  it  is  all  over/ 
I  then  said,  'Mr.  POE,  I  must  tell  you  that  you  are  near  your  end. 
Have  you  any  wish  or  word  for  friends?'  He  said,  'Nevermore/ 

At  length  he  exclaimed:  *O  God!  Is  there  no  ransom  for  the  death 
less  spirit?'  I  said,  'Yes,  look  to  your  Saviour;  there  is  mercy  for  you 
and  all  mankind.  God  is  love  and  the  gift  is  free/ 

The  dying  man  then  said  impressively,  'He  who  arched  the  heav 
ens  and  upholds  the  universe,  has  His  decrees  legibly  written  upon  the 
frontlet  of  every  human  being,  and  upon  demons  incarnate/ 

I  then  consoled  him  by  saying,  'He  died  for  you  and  me  and  all 
mankind.  Trust  in  His  mercy/  .  .  . 

The  glassy  eyes  rolled  back ;  there  was  a  sudden  tremor ;  and  the 
immortal  soul  of  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  was  borne  swiftly  away  to  the 
spirit  world. 

This  statement  of  Moran  is  somewhat  more  impressive 
than  the  one  he  made  to  Mrs.  Clemm,  viz. :  that  Poe  con 
tinued  calling  for  one  "Reynolds,"  and  was  in  violent 
delirium  until  the  end,  and  that,  as  he  died,  he  exclaimed : 
4 'Lord  help  my  poor  soul/' 

In  this  memoir  Dr.  Moran  insists  that  Poe  was  in  the 
hospital  only  sixteen  hours  before  his  death.  In  referring  to 
this  matter,  he  says : 

A  certain  biographer  has  recently  written  that  'Poe  was  four  days 
in  a  fit  of  delirium  before  he  died/  and  his  cousin,  Neilson  Poe,  is  re 
ported  by  this  same  writer  to  have  said  that  he,  Judge  Poe,  called  to 
see  him,  but  he  was  in  such  wild  delirium  that  admission  was  re 
fused;  that  he  sent  changes  of  linen,  etc.,  to  add  to  his  comfort.  I  take 
this  opportunity  to  assert  that  the  statements  are  utterly  untrue  and 
without  the  slightest  foundation. 

In  the  letter  to  Mrs.  Clemm  immediately  following  Poe's 
death,  Dr.  Moran  wrote: 


110      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

When  I  returned  I  found  the  patient  in  a  violent  delirium,  resist 
ing  the  effort  of  two  nurses  to  keep  him  in  bed.  This  state  continued 
until  Saturday  evening  (he  was  admitted  on  Wednesday)  when  he 
commenced  calling  for  one  'Reynolds'  which  he  did  all  through  the 
night  until  three  on  Sunday  morning. 

The  only  medical  importance  this  description  possesses 
is  that  the  symptoms  accompanying  death  to  a  certain 
extent  elucidate  the  facts  of  causation ;  the  letter  to  Mrs. 
Clemm  supports  the  theory  that  Poe  died  of  an  organic 
ally  diseased  brain  complicated  by  an  intense  meningeal 
congestion. 

I  agree  with  Moran  that  Poe  did  not  die  of  alcoholism, 
nor  was  his  death  that  of  a  drunkard ;  yet  it  is  entirely  pos 
sible  that  alcohol  was  the  exciting  cause.  It  is  certain  that 
meningeal  irritation,  due  to  brain  congestion  or  inflamma 
tion — Moran  seems  to  have  kept  no  record  as  to  whether 
or  not  there  was  fever — was  the  direct  cause  of  Poe's  death. 

Moran  was  probably  mistaken  in  his  statement  that 
Dr.  Monkur's  diagnosis  was  an  * 'inflammation  affecting  the 
encephalon — a  sensitive  and  delicate  membrane  of  the 
brain."  Such  a  definition  would  be  in  serious  conflict  with 
the  authorities  we  now  recognize.  Probably  the  word  that 
Moran  intended  to  use  was  meninges.  If  this  be  the  fact 
Dr.  Monkur  was  correct. 

Apparently  it  happened  in  the  case  of  Poe,  as  in  many 
similar  cases,  that  there  was  a  low  grade  of  inflammation 
affecting  the  meninges,  which,  in  all  probability,  had  pene 
trated  and  partly  disorganized  the  brain-matter,  composed 
as  it  is  of  brain  cells  and  their  connecting  processes.  This 
was  of  long  standing,  and,  even  without  the  use  of  stimu 
lants,  might  occasionally  give  evidence  of  brain  irritation. 
Alcohol,  in  the  slightest  quantity,  can  set  up  serious 
irritation — occasionally  active  inflammation — among  such 
morbid  and  diseased  brain  cells.  Whether  or  not  in  this 
particular  case  alcohol  precipitated  inflammation  or  in 
tense  congestion  is  not  essential  for  the  diagnosis. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      111 

There  is  no  reasonable  doubt  that  the  long  continued 
use  of  alcohol  by  one  who  is  predisposed,  can  produce 
this  organic  change.  A  simple  debauch,  with  a  brain  not 
alcoholically  diseased,  rarely  results  in  fatal  delirium. 

Poe's  alcoholic  excesses  were  something  for  which  he  was 
not  responsible.  His  drinking  was  the  result  of  hereditary 
compulsion.  It  was  as  much  a  part  of  him  as  was  his  pecu 
liar  intellect.  If  we  praise  him  for  his  genius,  and  if  his 
work  has  made  for  the  world's  happiness,  as  long  as  we 
cannot  forget  the  evil  thing  that  obsessed  him  and  for 
which  he  paid  the  penalty,  his  faults  should  be  condoned 
in  the  clear  understanding  that  he  cannot  be  held  respon 
sible  for  the  transmitted  neurosis. 

A  time  will  come  when  the  judgment  passed  upon  Poe 
must  be  reversed,  but  this  can  be  done  only  when  due 
consideration  has  been  given  the  evidence  concerning  his 
neurosis,  the  hereditary  compulsion  from  which  he  suf 
fered,  and  the  serious  mental  depression  that  was  a  part 
of  his  life  history. 

Early,  often  tragic,  deaths  are  not  unusual  in  men  of 
genius.  The  life  history  of  Napoleon  and  of  other  noted 
men  who,  at  an  early  age,  exhibited  precocious  mental 
capacity,  have  shown  a  corresponding  early  decline.  Their 
failure,  due  to  premature  mental  decay,  was  as  marked  as 
their  early  successes.  Nature's  method  of  compensation 
is  one  difficult  to  override  or  to  avoid.  This  premature  loss 
of  brain  power  comes  as  an  unalterable  psychological 
law,  although,  as  in  the  case  of  Poe,  it  may  be  hastened 
by  alcoholic  poisoning. 

Genius  is  a  divine  flame  that  slowly  burns  and  almost 
necessarily  consumes  those  unduly  endowed  with  this 
inheritance.  There  are  few  exceptions. 

In  no  case  can  alcohol  be  regarded  as  a  cause  of 
intellectual  preeminence  or  can  it  key  its  victims  to  the 
performance  of  notable  accomplishments.  Swinburne 


112      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

has  been  quoted  as  proof  of  the  fact  that  even  genius  may 
require  alcoholic  stimulation  in  order  that  its  finest  pro 
ductions  may  be  given  birth.  That  Swinburne's  produc 
tive  power  was  lost  when  he  ceased  using  intoxicants  is 
only  partly  true.  It  is  certainly  not  a  fact  that  his  creative 
conception  was  based  on  brain  stimulation  and  that  it 
ceased  when  no  longer  driven  by  alcoholic  stimulants.  The 
brain  cells  of  both  Swinburne  andPoe  refused  to  function, 
or  functioned  abnormally  because  of  alcoholic  abuse  and 
senile  decay,  and  no  stimulant  could  restore  to  them  their 
pristine  vigor  either  of  conception  or  of  execution.  They 
visualized  only  in  an  obscure  medium  "through  a  glass 
darkly." 

Such  "Visions"  as  typify  this  abnormal  state  are  oc 
casionally  hallucinated,  but  only  "the  highest  mounted 
mind"  can  give  them  expression: 

I  had  a  vision  when  the  night  was  late; 

A  youth  came  riding  toward  a  palace-gate. 

He  rode  a  horse  with  wings,  that  would  have  flown, 

But  that  his  heavy  rider  kept  him  down 

And  from  the  palace  came  a  child  of  sin 

And  took  him  by  the  curls  and  led  him  in, 

Where  sat  a  company  with  heated  eyes 

Expecting  when  a  fountain  should  arise. 

A  sleepy  light  upon  their  brows,  and  lips 

Suffused  them,  sitting,  lying,  languid  shapes, 

By  heaps  of  gourds,  and  skins  of  wine,  and  piles  of  grapes. 

Then  methought  I  heard  a  mellow  sound, 
Gathering  up  from  all  the  lower  ground; 
Narrowing  in  to  where  they  sat  assembled, 
Low  voluptuous  music  winding  trembled 
Woven  in  circles.     They  that  heard  it  sigh'd 
Panted  hand-in-hand  with  faces  pale 
Swung  themselves  and  in  low  tones  replied 
Till  the  fountain  spouted,  showering  wide 
Sleet  of  diamond-drift,  and  pearly  hail. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      113 

Then  the  music  touched  the  gates  and  died 

Rose  again  from  where  it  seemed  to  fail, 

Stormed  in  orbs  of  song,  a  growing  gale; 

Till  thronging  in  and  in,  to  where  they  waited, 

As't  were  a  hundred  throated  nightingale, 

The  strong  tempestuous  treble  throbb'd  and  palpitated; 

Ran  into  the  giddiest  whirl  of  sound 

Caught  the  sparkles,  and  in  circles, 

Purple  gauzes,  golden  hazes,  liquid  mazes, 

Flung  the  torrent  rainbow  round. 


And  then  I  look'd  up  toward  a  mountain-tract, 
That  girt  the  region  with  high  cliff  and  lawn. 
I  saw  that  every  morning,  far  withdrawn 
Beyond  the  darkness  and  the  cataract, 
God  made  Himself  an  awful  rose  of  dawn, 
Unheeded ;  and  detaching,  fold  by  fold, 
From  these  still  heights,  and,  slowly  drawing  near, 
A  vapor  heavy,  hueless,  formless,  cold, 
Came  floating  on  for  many  a  month  and  year, 
Unheeded ;  and  I  thought  I  would  have  spoken, 
And  warn'd  that  madman  ere  it  grew  too  late 
But,  as  in  dreams,  I  could  not.     Mine  was  broken, 
When  that  cold  vapor  touch'd  the  palace-gate, 
And  link'd  again.     I  saw  within  my  head 
A  gray  and  gap-tooth'd  man  as  lean  as  death, 
Who  slowly  rode  across  a  wither'd  heath, 
And  lighted  at  a  ruin'd  inn 

This  poem  has  been  mis-named  the  "Vision  of  Sin."  It 
should  have  been  entitled  a  "Vision  of  Genius."  It  was 
neither  the  "child  of  sin"  nor  the  "skins  of  wine"  that 
wrought  this  moral  and  physical  change — rather  the  in 
exorable  law  of  destiny.  From  this  "company  with  heated 
eyes"  shut  within  the  "palace-gates,"  intoxicated  by 
"voluptuous  music"  that  genius-gifted  souls  alone  can 
hear,  occasionally  there  bursts  forth  a  song  of  immortal 
melody — the  music  of  ages  to  come. 


SECTION  1 1 .    POE'S  CRITICS 

Such  varying  estimates  have  been  given  of  Poe's  moral 
character  and  so  many  differing  statements  have  been 
made  as  to  the  facts  of  his  life  that  it  is  difficult  for  his 
biographers  to  visualize  the  Man.  Hypnotized  by  his  bril 
liancy  they  have  idealized ,  or  swayed  by  personal  enmities 
and  influenced  by  hostile  statements  they  have  pilloried 
Poe  for  public  scorn. 

None  of  them  have  comprehended  Poe's  abnormal 
heredity,  nor  have  they  understood  the  morbid  ills  that 
were  a  part  of  his  mental  life  in  a  way  fairly  to  judge  of 
the  conditions  under  which  much  of  his  work  was  pro 
duced. 

Poe's  neurosis  has  been  so  exploited,  and  so  marvelous 
and  many  sided  was  his  genius,  that  it  has  been  difficult 
for  his  critical  biographers  to  classify  him. 

Was  Poe  the  Jekyll  of  Gill  or  the  Hyde  of  Griswold? 

Biography,  like  photography,  is  a  matter  of  skillful 
delineation.  It  can  be  successfully  pursued  only  by  one 
who  is  both  an  artist  and  an  impressionist.  More  than  a 
faithful  re-presentation  is  required.  A  simple  reproduc 
tion  without  a  proper  back-ground,  lights,  and  shadows, 
is  not  regarded  as  the  highest  art,  nor  will  the  resulting 
portrait  satisfy  unless  the  individual  negative  has  been 
retouched  and  the  blemishes,  which  are  a  part  of  every 
human  countenance,  have  been  removed. The  aging  wrinkle 
that  creases  the  forehead,  the  converging  "crow's  feet" 
that  accusingly  point  to  the  arcus  senilis,  the  wart  that 
is  slowly  displacing  the  beauty-giving  mole,  even  the 
statuesque  pose  we  assume,  and  our  attempt  to  look  pleas 
ant  when  the  iron  tongs  grip  our  cranium — all  these,  as  a 


116      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

rule,  are  painstakingly  removed ;  or,  should  the  artist  be  no 
artist,  are  so  modified  that  one  may  lose  his  individuality. 
Occasionally  the  photographer  is  compelled  to  take  a  side 
view  because  of  some  hideous  deformity. 

Should  the  photographer  whom  we  have  trusted  to 
make  our  likeness  be  so  careless  as  to  finish  and  to  mount 
the  photograph  as  it  comes  from  the  camera,  without  re 
touching  or  in  any  way  minimizing  and  disguising  time's 
ravages  or  nature's  handicap,  we  have  a  right  to  criticize 
the  careless  workmanship  that  was  content  to  represent  us 
with  the  disfiguring  yet  characteristic  blemishes. 

Griswold  did  nothesitate  to  freely  express,  in  the  Poe 
Memoir,  his  dislike  of  Poe  and  the  reasons  that  induced 
him  to  flay  his  dead  enemy;  and  he  asserted  his  right  to 
teach  the  world  by  holding  up  to  obloquy  the  life  of  the 
man  who  had  so  seriously  offended. 

Moreover,  his  career  is  full  of  instruction  and  warning,  and  it 
has  always  been  made  a  portion  of  the  penalty  of  wrong  that  its 
anatomy  should  be  displayed  for  the  common  study  and  advan 
tage. 

/  want  no  literary  anatomist  to  dissect  my  inmost 
thoughts,  or  to  explore  my  secret  places — hidden  even 
from  myself — or  to  speculate  on  their  untried  possibilities, 
or  to  exhibit  my  organs  as  specimens  of  dextrous  carv 
ing.  If  Nirvana  be  denied  the  spirit  that  animates  me,  and 
if  my  remains  be  refused  the  right  of  cremation,  and  if  they 
must  still  cumber  the  earth  and  be  pointed  to  as  anatom 
ical  specimens  for  exhibition,  at  least  let  my  body  be  filled 
with  spices  and  my  skin  be  softened  with  the  balm  of 
Gilead,  and  let  me  be  wrapped  in  spikenard  and  myrrh  as 
the  kindly  Egyptians  embalmed  those  whom  they  loved. 

The  biographer  occasionally  minimizes  faults,  explains 
away  defects,  and,  in  time,  may  so  idealize,  his  subject, 
that  we,  who  once  knew  him  and  loved  him  in  spite 
of  his  frailties,  who  knew  by  experience  his  shortcomings 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      117 

and  the  human  side  of  him,  may  be  pardoned  if  we  do  not 
at  first  glance  recognize  the  unfamiliar  pose  and  the  re 
touched  presentment.  For  this  reason  no  biographer  can 
satisfy  who  does  not  attempt,  while  giving  the  essential 
facts,  so  to  Boswellize  his  subject  as  to  free  him  from  petty 
faults  and  minor  weaknesses. 

Occasionally,  biographers  have  committed  serious  errors. 
I  do  not  care  for  Froude  who  enumerated  the  dyspeptic 
foibles  of  Carlyle,  nor  do  I  uphold  Trelawney  who  exhib 
ited  the  antics  of  the  half-mad  Byron;  above  all  I  dislike 
Griswold  who  defamed  the  man  whom  he  should  have 
honored  and  who,  for  this  reason,  shall  be  known  as  the 
"unfaithful  servant  who  abused  his  trust." 

Should  the  biographer  deliberately  pose  his  subject 
from  the  scar  side,  exhibiting  all  deformities  and  magni 
fying  blemishes,  at  the  same  time  touching  out  the  features 
that  do  give  individuality  and  the  right  to  posterity's 
remembrance,  he  may  no  longer  claim  authority  to  repre 
sent,  or  to  be  associated  with  one  he  has  so  foully  wronged. 

Such  an  one  was  the  Reverend  Rufus  Wilmot  Griswold, 
who,  by  artifice  and  fraud,  has  so  firmly  and  indissolubly 
connected  his  name  with  that  of  Poe,  and  in  the  preface  to 
Poe's  own  works  has  made  statements  of  such  a  character, 
so  distorted  when  they  bear  the  slightest  semblance  of 
truth,  when  not  absolutely  false  so  perverted  as  to  be 
utterly  misleading,  that  I  cannot  pass  him  over  without 
discussion. 

Griswold  was  a  man  of  Poe's  own  age.  He  had  no  he 
reditary  weaknesses,  no  compulsions,  no  obsessions,  no 
genius.  He  had  been  a  preacher. 

I  imagine  him  to  have  been  a  man  strongly  built,  with  a 
squat  figure;  square,  flat,  stubby  fingers  attached  to  a 
markedly  prehensile,  hairy  hand ;  jutting  brows  surmount 
ing  small,  close-set  eyes  that  looked  forth  boldly  and 
confidently;  a  long,  flat  nose  with  spreading  alae,  and  a 


118      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

prognathous  jaw  covered  with  a  heavy  beard  which  de 
scended  and  became  a  part  of  his  hairy  chest.  I  cannot  say 
that  this  picture,  in  outward  form,  more  resembles  Gris- 
wold's  real  features  than  the  distorted  moral  picture  he 
drew  resembled  Poe;  yet  God  marks  all  of  us.  Beyond 
question  there  should  have  been  some  such  physique  to 
have  contained  the  strong,  sterling  qualities,  as  well  as 
certain  moral  obliquities  that  sometimes  disfigure  man. 
His  countenance  must  have  borne  that  sactimonious  ex 
pression  which  Hogarth  gave  to  the  Puritan — of  that  man 
who  has  never,  in  public,  committed  a  wrong  action  or 
thought  a  wrong  thought.  Such  men  we  had  when  the  in 
quisition  flourished,  when  intolerance  ruled  our  land  and 
witches  were  burned,  while  old  Cotton  Mather  from  his 
pulpit  urged  on  his  flock  to  further  deeds  of  righteousness. 
Mrs.  Whitman,  recalling  Poe's  picture  in  the  first  vol 
ume  of  his  collected  works,  says : 

The  reader  who  has  this  volume  in  his  hands,  turns  back  musingly 
to  look  upon  the  features  of  the  poet  in  whom  resided  such  inspiration. 
But  though  well  engraved,  and  useful  as  recalling  his  features  to  those 
who  knew  him  with  the  angel  shining  through,  the  picture  is  from  a 
daguerreotype  and  gives  no  idea  of  the  beauty  of  Edgar  Poe. 

As  to  whether  Poe  was  responsible  when  he  requested 
Griswold  to  edit  his  works  or,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  whether 
this  request  was  ever  made,  will  be  discussed  later.  It  is 
certain  that  at  no  time  did  Poe  ask  or  expect  Griswold  to 
write  a  memoir  to  be  published  as  an  introduction  to  his 
collected  writings. 

This  final  tribute,  which  should  properly  introduce  Poe 
to  the  world,  if  he  required  an  introduction,  had  been 
assigned  to  Willis.  At  best  it  was  to  be  perfunctory,  as  is 
usually  the  case  when  some  personage  addresses  a  small 
town  audience,  and  the  leading  citizen  is  asked  to  take  a 
seat  upon  the  stage  and  make  a  few  "introductory  re- 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      119 

marks."  Should  this  introductory  speech  be  filled  with 
scathing  denunciation  reflecting  on  the  speaker's  past  his 
tory,  his  morals,  his  manners,  and  branding  him  a  felon, 
surely  the  introducer  hardly  would  be  thought  to  have  car 
ried  out  honorably  his  part  of  the  function. 

Griswold  was  a  man  experienced  in  literary  criticism, 
with  some  pretension  to  the  role  of  arbiter  as  to  those 
things  that  should  constitute  contemporary  American  liter 
ature  and  that  should  be  preserved ;  yet  he  was  possessed  of 
no  originality  or  capacity  further  than  that  second-rate 
capacity  for  collecting  and  annotating  the  work  of  others. 
He  had  published  a  few  sermons  and  had  written  some 
verse,  but  his  chief  literary  activity  had  consisted  in  col 
lecting,  annotating,  and  associating  his  own  name  with  the 
work  of  his  contemporaries.  He  had  edited  anthologies 
of  the  American  poets,  and  had  compiled  books.  To  him 
we  must  credit  "Poetry  and  Prose  Writers  of  America," 
as  well  as  "Washington  and  His  Generals,"  "Napoleon 
and  His  Marshals,"  "The  Female  Poets  of  America,"  and 
other  publications  of  like  caliber.  He  was  also  responsible 
for  "The  Cypress  Wreath:  A  Book  of  Consolation  for 
Those  Who  Mourn,"  and  a  "Biographical  Annual,  Consist 
ing  of  Memoirs  of  Eminent  Persons  Recently  Deceased." 
Certainly  none  of  these  works,  either  by  title  or  contents, 
gave  any  evidence  of  the  powers  of  vituperation  that 
dwelt  in  the  reverend  gentleman.  It  is  certain  he  would  not 
have  dared  to  write  of  Poe,  living,  as  he  did  of  Poe,  dead. 

Griswold  had  proposed  to  insert  some  of  Poe's  work  in 
one  of  his  anthologies — in  fact  it  was  in  this  way  that  Poe 
had  made  his  acquaintance.  Poe  did  not  hesitate  to  criti 
cize  fully  and  freely  "The  Poets  and  Poetry  of  America," 
and  to  differ  seriously  with  Griswold  in  his  estimate  of  cer 
tain  authors.  It  is  also  true  that,  because  Griswold  occupied 
the  position  vacated  by  Poe  on  "Graham's  Magazine,"  as 
well  as  for  other  reasons,  there  had  resulted  a  personal  en- 


120      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

mity.  After  Poe's  death  Griswold  exhibited  marked  inter 
est  in  the  welfare  of  Mrs.  Clemm,  sympathized  with  her  in 
her  bereavement,  and  to  her  expressed  friendship  for  Poe. 

Had  there  been  no  reconciliation,  it  is  impossible  for  me 
to  conceive  the  innate  vindictiveness  of  a  man  that  would 
deliberately  take  such  revenge  on  a  dead  foe.  I  prefer  to 
believe  that  the  man's  mental  caliber  was  so  small  and 
his  moral  fiber  so  coarse  that  he  did  not  appreciate  the 
nature  and  quality  of  his  act  or  the  enormity  of  this 
breach  of  trust,  simply  because  he  had  none  of  the  in 
stincts  that  would  have  restrained  a  more  gentle  man.  That 
there  was  some  foundation  for  this  personal  assault  and 
these  distorted  statements  makes  it  the  more  unforgivable. 
Certain  it  is  that  many  of  Poe's  literary  acquaintances, 
although  they  had  received  over-severe  criticism  at  his 
hands,  or  had  suffered  in  a  business  way  to  a  far  greater 
extent  than  had  Griswold,  came  to  the  defense  of  the 
memory  of  Poe,  and  forgot  small  antagonisms  and 
personal  misunderstandings  in  rehabilitating  the  good 
name  of  the  man  whom  they  regarded  as  their  literary 
master. 

If  any  of  Poe's  business  associates  had  the  right  to  com 
plain,  or  to  criticize  certain  acts  and  statements  of  Poe 
during  his  periods  of  irresponsibility,  it  was  Graham  of  the 
"Graham's  Magazine";  yet  he,  supported  by  Willis  and 
other  literary  friends  and  associates,  so  bitterly  denounced 
the  death  notice  written  by  Griswold  for  the  "New  York 
Tribune,"  as  to  precipitate  a  controversy  the  echoes  of 
which  have  not  yet  ceased  to  reverberate.  Griswold  excul 
pated  himself  by  asserting  that,  at  the  time  he  wrote 
the  "Tribune"  sketch,  he  did  not  know  that  he  had  been 
appointed  Poe's  literary  executor.  It  is  not  certain  that 
he  was  so  appointed.  He  had  "heard"  that  Poe  "had  long 
been  in  the  habit  of  expressing  a  desire  that  in  the  event 
of  his  death  I  should  be  his  editor."  It  is  not  for  this  pre- 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      121 

liminary  sketch  that  Griswold's  name  is  anathema.  As  a  re 
viewer  or  commentator  he  had  the  right  to  express  his  opin 
ion  of  Poe,  although  it  might  have  been  a  more  friendly 
act  and  one  more  in  consonance  with  the  dictates  of 
decency  and  humanity  had  he  foregone  this  right,  consider 
ing  their  past  differences  and  association.  After  accepting 
the  editorship  of  Poe's  writings  Griswold  was  under  no 
misconception  as  to  the  duties  it  entailed. 

I  did  not  suppose  I  was  debarred  from  the  expression  of  any  feel 
ings  or  opinions  in  the  case  of  the  acceptance  of  this  office,  the  duties  of 
which  I  regarded  as  simply  the  collection  of  his  works  and  their  publi 
cation  for  the  benefit  of  the  rightful  inheritors  of  his  property,  in  a 
form  and  manner  that  would  have  probably  been  most  agreeable  to 
his  own  wishes. 

In  the  'Tribune"  article  published  a  few  days  after  Poe's 
death  Griswold  made  slanderous  statements  that  most 
seriously  reflected  on  Poe's  moral  character,  and  retailed 
incidents  that,  to  him,  seemed  to  justify  the  assertion 
that  while  it  might  surprise  many  to  learn  of  Poe's  death, 
"but  few  would  be  grieved  by  it."  Had  this  statement  been 
the  only  offense  no  further  notice  would  have  been  taken 
of  it,  especially  as  Griswold  did  not  sign  his  own  name  but, 
for  a  good  reason,  chose  "Ludwig"  as  a  fit  pseudonym 
to  accompany  this  denunciatory  obituary. 

The  Ludwig  article  began: 

Edgar  Allan  Poe  is  dead.  He  died  in  Baltimore  the  day  before  yes 
terday.  This  announcement  will  startle  many,  but  few  will  be  grieved 
by  it. 

The  poet  was  well  known  personally  or  by  reputation,  in  all  this 
country;  he  had  readers  in  England,  and  in  several  of  the  States  of 
Continental  Europe;  but  he  had  few  or  no  friends;  and  the  regrets  for 
his  death  will  be  suggested  principally  by  the  consideration  that  in 
him  literary  art  lost  one  of  its  most  brilliant,  but  erratic  stars. 

After  briefly  sketching  Poe's  early  life,  and  the  eminent 
respectability  of  "General  Poe",  as  well  as  his  relationship 


122      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

to  "Admiral    McBride,"  Griswold  gives  an  account  of 
Poe's  first  literary  adventure : 

In  1832  the  proprietor  of  a  weekly  gazette,  in  Baltimore,  offered 
two  premiums,  one  for  the  best  story  in  prose,  the  other  in  poetry.  .  . 
Such  matters  are  usually  disposed  of  in  a  very  off-hand  way :  commit 
tees  to  award  literary  prizes  drink  to  the  payer's  health,  in  good  wines 
over  the  unexamined  MSS.  which  they  submit  to  the  discretion  of 
the  publisher,  with  permission  to  use  their  names  in  such  a  way  as  to 
promote  the  publisher's  advantage.  So  it  would  have  been  in  this  case, 
but  that  one  of  the  committee,  taking  up  a  small  book  in  such  ex 
quisite  chirography  as  to  seem  like  one  of  the  finest  issues  of  the  press 
of  Putnam,  was  tempted  to  read  several  pages.  Being  interested  he 
summoned  the  attention  of  the  company  to  the  half-dozen  composi 
tions  in  the  volume.  It  was  unanimously  decided  that  the  prizes  should 
be  paid  to  the  first  of  geniuses  who  had  written  legibly.  Not  another 
MSS.  was  unfolded. 

Poe,  coming  for  his  prize  money,  is  described  as: 

Thin  and  pale,  even  to  cadaverousness,  his  whole  appearance  in 
dicated  sickness  and  the  utmost  destitution.  A  tattered  coat  concealed 
the  absence  of  shirt,  and  the  ruins  of  boots  disclosed  more  than  the 
want  of  stockings. 

On  what  foundation  Griswold  based  his  description,  or 
whether  it  was  altogether  an  imaginary  sketch,  cannot  now 
be  determined.  This  extract,  as  well  as  the  first,  was  pro 
nounced  to  be  an  overdrawn  statement  of  the  real  facts, 
as  occasionally  is  the  newspaper  way.  Kennedy,  Poe's 
discoverer  and  friend,  did  say  that  Poe  excused  himself 
from  accepting  an  invitation  to  dinner,  "for  reasons  of  the 
most  humiliating  nature — my  personal  appearance."  In 
his  "Reminiscences  of  Poe,"  John  H.  Latrobe,  another 
member  of  the  committee  that  awarded  Poe  the  prize 
offered  by  'The  Saturday  Visiter,"  gives  the  following  de 
scription  of  Poe : 

My  office  in  those  days  was  in  the  building  still  occupied  by  the 
Mechanics  Bank,  and  I  was  seated  at  my  desk  on  the  Monday  follow 
ing  the  publication  of  the  tale,  when  a  gentleman  entered  and  intro 
duced  himself  as  the  writer,  saying  that  he  had  come  to  thank  me,  as 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      123 

one  of  the  committee,  for  the  award  in  his  favor.  Of  this  interview  my 
recollection  is  very  distinct  indeed.  .  .  .  He  was  dressed  in  black,  and 
his  frock  coat  was  buttoned  to  the  throat,  where  it  met  the  black  stock, 
then  universally  worn.  Not  a  particle  of  white  was  visible.  Coat,  hat, 
boots  and  gloves  had  very  evidently  seen  their  best  days,  but  so  far 
as  mending  and  brushing  go  everything  had  been  done,  apparently, 
to  make  them  presentable. 

On  most  men  his  clothes  would  have  looked  shabby  and  seedy,  but 
there  was  something  about  this  man  that  prevented  one  from  criti 
cising  his  garments  and  the  details  I  have  mentioned  were  only  re 
called  afterwards.  The  impression  made,  however,  was  that  the  award 
made  in  Mr.  Poe's  favor  was  not  inopportune.  Gentleman  was  written 
all  over  him.  .  .  . 

Dr.  Griswold's  statement  'that  Mr.  Kennedy  accompanied  him 
[Poe]  to  a  clothing  store  and  purchased  for  him  a  respectable  suit, 
with  a  change  of  linen,  and  sent  him  to  a  bath/  is  a  sheer  fabrication. 

Describing  Poe's  personal  appearance  in  the  street, 
Ludwig  wrote : 

He  was  at  times  a  dreamer — dwelling  in  ideal  realms — in  heaven 
or  hell  peopled  with  creations  and  the  accidents  of  his  brain.  He  walked 
the  streets  in  madness  or  melancholy,  with  lips  moving  in  indistinct 
curses,  or  with  eyes  upturned  in  passionate  prayers,  (never  for  him 
self,  for  he  felt,  or  professed  to  feel,  that  he  was  already  damned,  but 
for  their  happiness  who  at  the  moment  were  objects  of  his  idolatry ;)  or 
with  his  glance  introverted  to  a  heart  gnawed  with  anguish,  and  with 
a  face  shrouded  in  gloom,  he  would  brave  the  wildest  storms;  and  all 
night  with  drenched  garments  and  arms  wildly  beating  the  wind  and 
rain,  he  would  speak  as  if  to  spirits  that  at  such  times  only  could  be 
evoked  by  him  from  the  Aidenn  close  by  whose  portals  his  disturbed 
soul  sought  to  forget  the  ills  to  which  his  constitution  subjected  him — • 
close  by  the  Aidenn  where  were  those  he  loved — the  Aidenn  which  he 
might  never  see  but  in  fitful  glimpses,  as  its  gates  opened  to  receive 
the  less  fiery  and  more  happy  natures  whose  listening  to  sin  did  not 
involve  the  doom  of  death. 

This  Ludwig  article  was  bitterly  criticised  by  John  Neal, 
Poe's  first  literary  sponsor,  as  well  as  by  Graham,  his  long 
time  associate,  and  by  Willis,  in  his  "Death  of  Edgar  A. 
Poe",  contained  in  the  first  volume.  It  was  to  amplify  and 
to  prove  the  basic  truth  of  the  Ludwig  article  that  Gris- 


124       POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

wold  wrote  the  memoir  he  prefixed  to'The  Literati."  Evi 
dently  smarting  under  these  criticisms,  he  entered  more 
fully  into  details  and  extended  his  descriptions  of  Poe's 
misbehavior,  adding  many  statements  later  proved  to 
be  false. 

If,  when  Griswold  wrote  this  first  article  he  did  not  know 
he  was  to  preside  over  Poe's  literary  remains,  he  certainly 
did  know  that,  as  editor  and  in  complete  control  of  Poe's 
collected  works,  by  reproducing  and  amplifying  his  original 
charges  he  was  holding  up  to  obloquy  a  literary  artist  the 
latchet  of  whose  shoe  he  was  not  worthy  to  touch. 

He  took  advantage  of  this  accidental  relationship  to  be 
smirch  the  memory  of  one  whom  by  all  the  codes  of  de 
cency  he  was  under  obligations  to  shield.  He  attempted  to 
prove  that  Poe  was  as  evil  and  morally  corrupt  as  he 
had  described  him  in  the  Ludwig  article.  The  unforgivable 
act  was  his  insertion  of  this  as  a  memoir  prefacing  Poe's 
collected  works,  so  that  they  became  the  vehicle  for  carry 
ing  his  defamatory  statements  to  all  the  world ;  and,  still 
worse,  these  scurrilous  accusations  unfortunately  bore  the 
imprint  of  authority. 

It  would  have  been  better  for  the  memory  of  both  Poe 
and  Griswold  had  Poe  died  somewhat  earlier  and  been  in 
cluded  in  the  "Memoirs  of  Eminent  Persons  Recently 
Deceased,"  or  even  in  "The  Cypress  Wreath :  The  Book  of 
Consolation  for  Those  Who  Mourn".  Certainly  it  would 
have  been  better  for  Griswold,  who  did  not  confine  himself 
to  the  villification  of  the  dead  but  bitterly  assailed  those 
who  had  a  good  word  for  Poe  and  who  were  better  ac 
quainted  with  him  through  intimate  business  and  personal 
relations.  Quoting  from  Griswold's  preface : 

My  unconsidered  and  imperfect,  but,  as  every  one  who  knew  its 
subject  readily  perceived,  very  kind  article,  was  now  vehemently 
attacked.  A  writer  under  the  signature  of  'George  R.  Graham'  in  a 
sophomorical  and  trashy  but  widely  circulated  Letter,  denounced  it  as 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      125 

'the  fancy  sketch  of  a  jaundiced  vision,'  and  'an  immortal  infamy'  and 
its  composition  'a  breach  of  trust'  .  .  .  And  Mr.  John  Neal,  too,  who 
had  never  had  even  the  slightest  personal  acquaintance  with  Poe  in  his 
life,  rushes  from  a  sleep  which  the  public  had  trusted  was  eternal,  to 
declare  that  my  characterization  of  Poe  is  false  and  malicious,  and  that 
I  am  a  'caluminator,'  a  'Rhadamanthus'  etc.,  etc. 

All  this  is  contained  in  a  sketch,  preliminary  to  the 
memoir,  which  Griswold  inserted,  and  proves  that  he  did 
what  he  did  deliberately,  calculatingly,  and  in  cold  blood. 
He  recognized  and  conceded  Poe's  genius  and  did  not  deny 
to  him  primacy  as  the  greatest  of  American  writers.  This 
was  an  unnecessary  concession,  inasmuch  as  the  volumes 
in  which  it  was  to  appear  spoke  in  Poe's  own  behalf. 
Although  unnecessary,  a  literary  estimate  with  propriety 
could  have  been  inserted.  Poe's  writings  and  not  his  morals 
should  have  been  the  matter  for  discussion.  Amongst 
Griswold's  encomiums  was  a  most  malignant  attack  on 
Poe's  moral  life,  and  a  determined  attempt  to  blacken  his 
character  by  introducing  hostile  statements — some  appar 
ently  true,  but  in  no  way  proper  to  be  related  if  true ;  others 
absolutely  false  and  malicious. 

What  Griswold  did  not  dare  to  state  definitely — and 
there  was  little  he  failed  to  allege — he  introduced  by  insin 
uation  and  innuendo.  In  describing  the  final  rupture 
between  Poe  and  Allan  he  referred  to  some  act  which, 

If  true,  throws  a  dark  shade  upon  the  quarrel,  and  a  very  ugly 
light  upon  Poe's  character.  We  shall  not  insert  it  because  it  is  one  of 
those  relations  we  think  with  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  should  never  be 
recorded, — being  Verities  whose  truth  we  fear  and  heartily  wish  there 
were  no  truth  therein  .  .  whose  relations  honest  minds  do  deprecate. 
For  of  sins  heteroclitical,  and  such  as  want  name  or  such  precedent, 
there  is  of ttimes  a  sin  even  in  their  history.  We  desire  no  record  of  enor 
mities;  sins  should  be  accounted  new.  They  omit  of  their  monstrosity 
as  they  fall  from  their  rarity ;  for  men  count  it  venial  to  err  with  their 
forefathers  and  foolishly  conceive  they  divide  a  sin  in  its  society.  .  .  . 
In  things  of  this  nature,  silence  commendeth  history;  'tis  the  veniable 


126      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

part  of  things  lost;  wherein  there  must  never  arise  a  Pancirollus,  nor 
remain  any  register  but  that  of  hell. 

Such  rumors,  even  if  they  can  be  authenticated,  should 
have  no  place  in  a  memoir  where  their  mere  presence 
breeds  contagion.  Many  statements  in  which  Griswold  re 
flects  on  Poe  have  been  proved  to  be  without  foundation. 
In  this  particular  case  Poe,  at  worst,  was  under  the  in 
fluence  of  alcohol  when  he  made  some  slighting  remark  to 
Mrs.  Allan  regarding  this  second  marriage. 

Griswold  minimized  nothing.  In  every  instance  where 
an  immoral  or  even  an  indiscreet  action  was  alleged,  he 
made  no  allowance  for  the  fact  that  Poe  might  not  have 
been  responsible.  Many  of  his  statements  relate  to  inci 
dents  that  occurred  during  the  period  of  Poe's  life  when 
we  know  that  his  intellect  was  failing.  It  was  not  necessary 
that  Griswold  should  have  assumed  an  attitude  toward 
the  memory  of  Poe  which  did  not  fully  represent  his  own 
judgment.  Having  undertaken  the  position  of  a  literary 
executor,  it  was  not  his  duty  and  should  not  have  been  his 
pleasure  to  exhibit  in  the  worst  light  all  the  weaknesses  and 
evil  compulsions  that  exist  in  all  of  us.  He  certainly  had 
no  right  to  accept  as  a  fact,  and  to  include  in  this  memoir, 
anything  of  a  discreditable  nature  without  the  fullest  in 
vestigation,  and  then  only  as  an  elucidation  of  the  text. 
His  own  explanation  does  not  render  the  matter,  or  the 
manner,  of  his  memoir  less  offensive : 

De  mortuis  nil  nisi  bonum  is  a  common  and  an  honorable  senti 
ment,  but  its  proper  application  would  lead  to  the  suppression  of  the 
histories  of  half  of  the  most  conspicuous  of  mankind ;  in  this  case  it  is 
impossible  on  account  of  the  notoriety  of  Mr.  Poe's  faults;  and  it 
would  be  unjust  to  the  living  against  whom  his  hands  were  always 
raised  and  who  had  no  resort  but  inhisoutlawry  fromtheirsympathies. 
Moreover,  his  career  is  full  of  instruction  and  warning,  and  it  has  al 
ways  been  made  a  portion  of  the  penalty  of  wrong  that  its  anatomy 
should  be  displayed  for  the  common  study  and  advantage. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      127 

Few  had  more  experience  in  biography  and  in  the  per 
sonal  study  of  authors  than  this  Griswold,  but  in  the  case 
of  no  other  writer  did  he  find  it  necessary  to  demonstrate 
anatomy  or  to  preach  a  lesson  to  the  world.  Even  this 
pious  intention  does  not  justify  such  an  anatomization. 
Griswold  thus  sums  up  Poe's  demerits : 

His  harsh  experience  had  deprived  him  of  all  faith,  in  man  or  wo 
man.  He  had  made  up  his  mind  upon  the  numberless  complexities  of 
the  social  world,  and  the  whole  system  with  him  was  an  imposture. 
This  conviction  gave  a  direction  to  his  shrewd  and  naturally  un- 
amiable  character.  Still,  though  he  regarded  society  as  composed  alto 
gether  of  villains,  the  sharpness  of  his  intellect  was  not  of  the  kind 
which  enabled  him  to  cope  with  villainy,  while  it  continually  caused 
him  by  overshots  to  fail  of  the  success  of  honesty.  He  was  in  many 
respects  like  Francis  Vivian,  in  Bulwer's  novel  of  The  Caxtons.' 
Passion,  in  him,  comprehended  many  of  the  worst  emotions  which 
militate  against  human  happiness.  You  could  not  contradict  him,  but 
you  raised  quick  choler;  you  could  not  speak  of  wealth  but 
his  cheek  paled  with  gnawing  envy.  The  astonishing  natural  advan 
tages  of  this  poor  boy — his  beauty,  his  readiness,  the  daring  spirit  that 
breathed  around  him  like  a  fiery  atmosphere — had  raised  his  constitu 
tional  self-confidence  into  arrogance  that  turned  his  very  claims  to  ad 
miration  into  prejudices  against  him.  Irascible,  envious — bad  enough, 
but  not  the  worst,  for  these  salient  angles  were  all  varnished  over  with 
a  cold  repellant  synicism  [sic],  his  passions  vented  themselves  in 
sneers.  There  seemed  to  him  no  moral  susceptibility;  and,  what  was 
more  remarkable  in  a  proud  nature,  little  or  nothing  of  the  true  point 
of  honor.  He  had,  to  a  morbid  excess,  that  desire  to  rise  which  is  vul 
garly  called  ambition,  but  no  wish  for  the  esteem  or  the  love  of  his 
species ;  only  the  hard  wish  to  succeed — not  shine,  not  serve — succeed, 
that  he  might  have  the  right  to  despise  a  world  which  galled  his  self 
conceit. 

In  these  words  does  Griswold  close  his  self-appointed 
task  of  writing  a  memoir  of  Edgar  A.  Poe ! 

The  standard  by  which  Poe's  actions  and  moral  charac 
ter  were  to  be  judged  was  established  by  Griswold  and 
remained  for  many  years  the  verdict  on  the  man. 

Although  no  one  attempted  any  thorough  study  either  of 


128      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

Poe's  life  or  his  writings,  there  frequently  appeared  among 
short  biographical  sketches  and  in  the  prefaces  to  Poe's 
works  references  to  his  life,  the  main  facts  of  which  were 
usually  based  on  Griswold's  statements.  These  for  many 
years  remained  unquestioned  by  the  reading  public,  in 
spite  of  monographs  either  protesting  against  unfair  judg 
ments  or  filled  with  denials  so  general  that  they  did  not 
cover  all  the  facts.  These  partisan  statements  in  no  way 
lessened  the  settled  conviction  as  to  Poe's  immoral  life. 
Gradually  the  belief  became  firmly  established  that,  in 
spite  of  its  brilliancy,  possibly  because  of  it,  all  of  Poe's 
work  was  the  reflex  of  a  brain  diseased  or  drugged.  Some 
of  Poe's  contemporaries  and  close  associates,  such  as  Briggs 
of  the  "Broadway  Journal,"  added  their  testimony  to  that 
of  Griswold.  In  the  preface  to  an  early  illustrated  English 
edition  of  Poe's  works,  published  in  1858,  Briggs  prefaced 
the  "Poems"  with  this  statement : 

A  close  study  of  his  works  will  reveal  the  fact,  which  may  serve  in 
some  degree  to  remove  this  embarrassment,  that  there  is  nowhere  dis 
coverable  in  them  a  consciousness  of  moral  responsibility.  . .  .  The 
Lenore  whose  loss  he  deplored,  was  a  being  fair  to  the  eye,  like  Un 
dine,  without  a  soul. . . .  Some  of  the  biographers  of  Poe  have  been 
harshly  j  udged  for  the  viewgiven  of  his  character,  and  it  has  natural 
ly  been  supposed  that  private  pique  led  to  the  exaggeration  of  his 
personal  defects. 

But  such  imputations  are  unjust:  a  truthful  delineation  of  his 
career  would  give  a  darker  hue  to  his  character  than  it  has  received 
from  his  biographers.  In  fact  he  has  been  more  fortunate  than  most 
poets  in  his  historians.  Lowell  and  Willis  have  sketched  him  with 
a  gentleness  and  a  reverent  feeling  for  his  genius :  and  Griswold,  his 
literary  executor,  in  his  fuller  biography,  has  generously  suppressed 
much  that  he  might  have  given. 

This  Briggs  is  one,  among  others,  whom  Griswold  so 
considerately  shielded  from  the  sting  of  Poe's  sarcasms 
when,  as  editor  of  Poe's  collected  works,  he  rewrote  and 
softened  Poe's  estimate  of  "Harry  Franco,"  the  nom  de 
plume  under  which  Briggs  wrote.  Briggs'  gratuitous  insult 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      129 

to  Poe  was  a  tribute  paid  to  the  kindness  of  Griswold  by 
one  whom  the  latter  had  considerately  protected. 

The  statements  of  Griswold  and  his  friends  have  been 
accepted  without  question  by  European  critics.  We  may 
take  pride  in  the  fact  that  Poe  is  recognized  by  them  as  a 
great  story  teller  and  poet,  and  that,  in  their  estimation, 
he  ranks  with  certain  of  their  writers — not  with  those  whom 
they  most  highly  regard.  This  toleration  and  recognition 
is,  however,. tinctured  with  a  certain  condescension.  The 
estimates  of  his  character,  and  of  the  things  he  wrote,  are 
not  pleasant  reading.  This  attitude  was  taken  not  for  the 
reason  that  Poe  was  an  American,  but  because,  being  the 
man  he  was  both  by  reason  of  his  strength  and  his  weak 
nesses,  he  was  misunderstood  and  misrepresented.  That 
this  was  done  ignorantly  and  not  viciously  does  not  make  it 
more  excusable.  For  this  reason,  I  will  mention  certain  of 
the  foreign  biographers  before  resuming  a  discussion  of 
those  who,  in  recent  years,  have  elucidated  the  facts. 

In  England  Poe  was  regarded  as  a  monster  of  vice. 
The  details  of  his  life  were  said  to  be  so  shocking  that  they 
could  only  be  suggested.  He  was  classed  among  the 
degenerates,  or  worse. 

The  "London  Athenaeum,"  gave  this  judgment: 

In  most  of  Edgar  Poe's  tales  there  is  either  an  extravagance,  as 
though  they  had  been  written  by  a  man  on  the  verge  of  delirium 
tremens,  or  else  a  labored  monotony,  as  though  his  resources  were  be 
ginning  to  run  dry.  The  poems,  with  their  strange  unwholesome  vigor 
'(if  such  things  can  be)  speak  for  themselves.  Their  writer,  apart  from 
his  works,  had  best  be  forgotten.  Edgar  Poe's  stories  seem,  all  of  them, 
to  have  been  written  under  the  inspiration  of  gin-and-water. 

The  first  Englishman  who  attempted  to  stem  this 
flood  of  ignorant  criticism  was  Hannay,  but  his  assertions 
were  met  with  jeers  of  derision.  Even  at  the  present  time 
Poe  is  not  judged  so  kindly,  nor  are  his  works  so  fully  ap 
preciated  as  they  are  in  America  and  France. 


130      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

"Eraser's  Magazine"  of  August,  1857,  contained  a  criti 
cism  of  Poe  based  on  a  review  of  "The  Poetical  Works  of 
Edgar  Allan  Poe :  With  a  Notice  of  his  Life  and  Genius. 
By  James  Hannay" : 

We  must  go  back  to  the  days  of  the  early  dramatists — of  Marlowe, 
Dekker,  Ford,  Massinger,  and  Otway — before  we  shall  find  any  par 
allel  to  the  wild  and  morbid  genius  and  the  reckless  and  miserable  life 
and  death  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  Never  was  there  a  sadder  story  than 
that  of  this  wayward  and  infatuated  youth,  his  wasted  opportunities, 
his  estranged  friends,  his  poverty  stricken  manhood,  his  drunken 
degradation,  his  gradual  sinking  lower  and  lower  into  the  depths  of 
profligacy  and  misery  till  at  last  he  died  of  delirium  tremens  at  the 
early  age  of  39.  And  his  poetical  genius,  his  extraordinary  analytical 
powers,  his  imagination  that  revolved  in  the  realm  of  the  awful,  the 
weird  and  the  horrible ;  his  utter  lack  of  truth  and  honor,  his  inveterate 
selfishness,  his  inordinate  vanity  and  insane  folly — all  go  to  make  a 
picture  so  strange,  so  sad,  that  it  cannot  be  easily  forgotten.  This 
volume  unhappily  sets  out  with  a  biographical  notice  of  Poe,  written 
by  Mr.  James  Hannay,  which  we  have  read  with  considerable  sur 
prise.  Should  any  man  of  sense  and  taste,  not  acquainted  with  Poe,  be 
so  unfortunate  as  to  look  on  Mr.  Hannay's  preface  before  reading  the 
poetry,  it  is  extremely  probable  that  he  will  throw  the  book  into  the 
fire  in  indignation  at  the  self  conceit  and  affected  smartness  by  which 
the  preface  is  characterized. 

Hannay's  defense  was  rather  apologetic  and  was  by  no 
means  fulsome  in  its  praise  of  Poe. 

In  1858,  the  "Edinburgh  Review"  reviewing  Griswold's 
four-volume  publication,  again  expressed  the  English 
estimate  of  Poe.  It  was  still  more  bitter  in  its  denuncia 
tion  of  his  life  and  work,  elaborating  Griswold's  charges 
and  magnifying  his  assertions  as  to  Poe's  irresponsible 
actions. 

Edgar  Allan  Poe  was  incontestably  one  of  the  most  worthless  per 
sons  of  whom  we  have  any  record  in  the  world  of  letters.  Many  authors 
have  been  as  idle;  many  as  improvident;  some  as  drunken  and  dissi 
pated;  and  a  few,  perhaps,  as  treacherous  and  ungrateful;  but  he 
seems  to  have  succeeded  in  attracting  and  combining,  in  his  own 
person,  all  the  floating  vices  which  genius  has  hitherto  shown  itself 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      131 

capable  of  grasping  in  its  widest  and  most  eccentric  orbit.  Yet  his 
chances  of  success  at  the  outset  of  life  were  great  and  manifold. 
Nature  was  bountiful  to  him;  bestowing  upon  him  a  pleasing  person 
and  excellent  talents.  Fortune  favored  him;  education  and  society 
expanded  and  polished  his  intellect,  and  improved  his  manner  into  an 
insinuating  and  almost  irresistible  address.  Upon  these  foundations 
he  took  his  stand;  became  early  very  popular  among  his  associates, 
and  might  have  erected  a  laudable  reputation,  had  he  possessed 
ordinary  prudence.  But  he  defied  his  good  genius.  There  was  a  per 
petual  strife  between  him  and  virtue,  in  which  virtue  was  never  tri 
umphant.  His  moral  stamen  was  weak,  and  demanded  resolute  treat 
ment;  but  instead  of  seeking  a  bracing  and  healthy  atmosphere,  he 
preferred  the  impurer  airs,  and  gave  way  readily  to  those  low  and 
vulgar  appetites,  which  infallibly  relax  and  press  down  the  victim  to 
the  lowest  state  of  social  abasement.  The  usual  prizes  of  life — repu 
tation,  competency,  friendship,  love — presented  themselves  in  turn; 
but  they  were  all  in  turn  neglected  or  forfeited — repeatedly,  in  fact, 
abandoned  under  the  detestable  passion  for  drink.  He  outraged  his 
benefactor,  he  deceived  his  friends,  he  sacrificed  his  love,  he  be 
came  a  beggar,  a  vagabond,  the  slanderer  of  a  woman,  the  delirious 
drunken  pauper  of  a  common  hospital — hated  by  some,  despised  by 
others,  and  avoided  by  all  respectable  men.  He  was,  as  we  have  said,  a 
blackguard  of  undeniable  type.  We  say  all  this  very  unwillingly;  for 
we  admire  very  sincerely  many  things  that  Mr.  Poe  has  produced.  We 
are  willing  to  believe  that  there  may  have  been,  as  Mrs.  Osgood  has 
stated,  an  amiable  side  to  his  character  and  that  his  mother-in-law 
had  cause  to  lament  his  loss.  We  learn,  moreover,  from  Mr.  Willis, 
that  at  one  time,  in  the  latter  portion  of  his  life,  'he  was  invariably 
punctual  and  industrious.'  The  testimony  of  that  gentleman  and  of 
Mr.  Lowell  (both  men  of  eminence  in  literature),  tempted  us  at  first 
to  suspend  our  opinion  of  the  author ;  but  the  weight  of  evidence  on 
the  darker  side  proved  overwhelming,  and  left  us  no  choice  but  to 
admit  and  to  stigmatize  with  our  most  decided  reprobation  those 
misdeeds  that  seem  to  have  constituted  almost  the  only  history  of  his 
short  career.  His  was,  as  Mr.  Griswold  states,  a  'shrewd  and  naturally 
unamiable  character.'  We  refuse  our  assent  to  the  argument  of  one  of 
his  advocates,  that  'his  whole  nature  was  reversed  by  a  single  glass  of 
wine.'  We  lean  to  the  ancient  proverb,  which  asserts  that  Truth  is 
made  manifest  upon  convivial  occasions. 


132      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

The  writer  suggests  a  curious  revival  of  the  "Longfellow 
War"  by  the  following  statement : 

We  are  not  able  to  ascertain  the  precise  date  at  which  he  borrowed 
a  poem  from  Professor  Longfellow,  imitated  it,  and  afterward  de 
nounced  the  author  as  a  Plagiarist  from  himself,  the  Simulator.  The 
mimic  poem  is  called  The  Haunted  House,'  and  is  one  of  Poe's  best 
pieces  of  verse.  The  original  is  The  Beleaguered  City,'  of  Mr.  Long 
fellow. 

It  is  probable  that  by  The  Haunted  House,  this  re 
viewer  intended  to  name  Poe's  The  Haunted  Palace,  and 
that  he  might  have  confused  this  poem  with  The  Deserted 
House  of  Tennyson; — one  typifying  a  disordered  mind, 
the  other,  death.  That  either  bears  the  slightest  resem 
blance  to  The  Beleaguered  City,  is  not  possible.  If  one  of 
these  poems  suggested,  or  was  the  prototype  of  the  other, 
the  originator  was  Poe.  The  Haunted  Palace  was  published  in 
'The  American  Museum"  for  April,  1839,  and  it  is  certain 
that  Poe  never  borrowed  a  manuscript  from  Longfellow. 
The  Beleagured  City  was  also  published  in  1839  but  after 
the  appearance  of  the  The  Haunted  Palace. 

The  one-sidedness  of  the  delineation  of  Poe  seems  to 
have  impressed  the  reviewer  and,  while  he  does  not  ques 
tion  Griswold's  statements,  he  seems  to  feel  conscious  of 
the  possibility  of  the  existence  of  a  germ  of  good — if  only 
it  could  be  discovered : 

We  feel,  even  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Poe,  that  it  would  have  been  desir 
able  if  a  fuller  biography  had  accompanied  his  works.  Honest  and 
able,  so  far  as  it  goes,  it  leaves  us  without  information  on  many  mat 
ters  from  which  much  might  have  been  gathered  to  form  an  accurate 
judgment.  Perhaps,  after  all,  we  are  copying  the  deformities  only  of 
the  man,  at  a  time  when  we  are  anxious  to  submit  all  that  was  good 
as  well  as  all  that  was  bad.  The  roughnesses  that  were  so  conspicuous 
on  the  surface  of  Poe's  character  would  naturally  attract  the  notice 
of  his  biographer  in  the  first  instance.  But,  underneath,  was  there 
nothing  to  tell  of? — no  cheeriness  in  the  boy — no  casual  acts  of  kind 
ness — no  adhesion  to  old  friendships — no  sympathy  with  the  poor  and 
unhappy,  that  might  have  been  brought  forward  as  indicative  of  his 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      133 

better  nature.  .  .  .  For  no  man  is  thoroughly  evil.  There  must  be 
slumbering  virtues — good  intentions  undeveloped — even  good  actions, 
claiming  to  have  a  place  on  record.  .  .  .  The  influence  of  his  faults 
were  limited,  and  the  penalty  he  alone  had  to  bear.  But  the  pleasure 
arising  from  his  writings  has  been  shared  by  many  thousand  people. 
In  speaking  of  himself  personally,  we  have  felt  bound  to  express  our 
opinions  without  any  subterfuge.  But  we  are  not  insensible  that, 
while  he  grasped  and  pressed  hardly  upon  some  individuals  with  one 
hand,  with  the  other  he  scattered  his  gifts  in  abundance  to  the  public. 

This  ignorant  and  scurrilous  review  was  approvingly 
copied  by  the  editor  of  The  Ladies'  Repository"  a  monthly 
periodical  devoted  to  literature  and  religion,  also  edited 
by  a  preacher,  the  Rev.  D.  W.  Clark,  D.  D. 

Griswold  had  won  his  case  and  had  fully  established  the 
facts  on  which  he  had  based  his  "unconsidered  and  imper 
fect  but,  as  everyone  who  knew  its  subject  readily  per 
ceived,  very  kind  article/' 

The  reverend  gentleman  had  found  the  one  method 

by  which  his  prejudiced,  untrue,  and  vicious  statements 

could  be  disseminated  equally  with  Poe's  immortal  works 

—possibly  the  only  method,  for  none  could  read  the  one 

without  seeing  the  other. 

In  assuming  the  truthfulness  of  Griswold's  statement 
in  preference  to  those  of  Lowell  and  Willis,  this  reviewer 
evidently  believed  that,  in  inserting  a  "Memoir,"  of  Poe 
into  his  collected  works,  at  least  that  Griswold  had  not 
magnified  Poe's  faults  but  that  he  had  performed  a  pain 
ful  duty.  For  this  reason  no  odium  was  attached  to  Gris 
wold  because  of  his  arraignment  of  Poe  and  it  was  be 
lieved  that  his  criticisms  had  been  as  kindly  as  could 
have  been  made,  considering  the  offensiveness  of  the 
subject. 

Among  foreign  critics,  the  writings  of  Poe  have  ap 
pealed  especially  to  those  of  France,  and  it  is  among  the 
French  that  his  earliest  and  most  earnest  literary  admirers 
were  found.  It  is  also  among  French  writers  that  the 


134      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

Griswold  charges  have  been  most  generally  accepted,  yet 
they  did  not  detract  from  the  pleasure  Poe's  work  gave 
his  French  readers ;  but  that  they  have  misunderstood  and 
misjudged  Poe,  the  man,  is  a  serious  matter. 

Even  in  America,  the  high  position  assigned  to  Poe  is 
occasionally  questioned.  Sometimes  he  is  called  "decadent" 
because,  probably,  a  certain  French  School  has  enthusi 
astically  praised  his  work.  At  one  time  America  hesitated 
to  accept  him  as  she  did  Cooper  and  Irving — and  Walt 
Whitman.  Poe  is  a  writer  without  a  country,  and  no  nation, 
nor  age,  nor  period,  may  claim  him. 

Although  Poe  found  favor  with  the  French  and,  before 
his  death,  was  regarded  by  certain  French  writers  as  a 
master,  the  majority  of  their  critics  wonder  and  admire, 
but  they  do  not  accept  him  as  a  peer  in  comparison  with 
their  best  writers.  Nowhere  has  he  been  more  severely 
condemned. 

His  followers  have  proved  his  worst  enemies,  for  their 
praises  rest  on  certain  of  his  qualities  that  are  most  ab 
normal.  Neither  his  life  nor  many  of  his  best  qualities  have 
been  fairly  exhibited.  Rather,  they  have  set  forth  his  ab 
normalities,  and  they  have  made  of  him  a  monster — at 
least  a  spectacle  to  be  imitated  by  some,  but  to  be  shunned 
by  all  who  are  not  classed  among  the  decadents.  His  chief 
exponent,  Baudelaire,  who  translated  his  work  and  who 
set  him  up  as  a  divinity,  to  be  invoked  and  to  be  wor 
shipped  as  a  god,  has  seriously  injured  the  standing  of  Poe 
among  the  greater  French  writers. 

As  far  as  Baudelaire  and  his  school  are  concerned, 
the  things  they  admire  and  hold  to  be  excellent  render 
explanations  unnecessary. 

Baudelaire  apparently  regarded  Griswold's  criticism  of 
Poe  as  typically  American,  and  that  it  was  in  consonance 
with  our  national  standards. 

Baudelaire  dimly  realized  that  Poe  was  born  with  an  in- 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      135 

heritance,  perhaps  not  of  evil,  but  one  that  was  fraught 
with  disaster.  He  psychologizes : 

There  are,  in  the  history  of  literature,  many  analogous  destinies  of 
actual  damnation, — many  men  who  bear  the  word  Luckless  written  in 
mysterious  characters  in  the  sinuous  folds  of  their  foreheads.  The 
blind  angel  of  Expiation  forever  hovers  around  them,  punishing  them 
with  rods  for  the  edification  of  others.  It  is  in  vain  that  their  lives  ex 
hibit  talents,  virtues  or  graces.  Society  has  for  them  a  special  anathema, 
accusing  them  even  of  those  infirmities  which  its  own  persecutions 
have  generated.  What  would  Hoffman  not  have  done  to  disarm 
Destiny?  what  Balzac  not  attempted  to  compel  Fortune?  Does  there, 
then,  exist  some  diabolic  Providence  which  prepares  misery  from  the 
cradle ;  which  throws,  and  throws  with  premeditation,  these  spiritual 
and  angelic  natures  into  hostile  ranks,  as  martyrs  were  once  hurled 
into  the  arena?  Can  there,  then,  be  holy  souls  destined  to  the  sacri 
ficial  altar,  compelled  to  march  to  death  and  glory  across  the  very 
ruins  of  their  lives?  Will  the  nightmare  of  gloom  eternally  besiege 
these  chosen  souls?  .  .  .  Their  destiny  is  written  in  their  very  con 
stitution  ;  sparkling  with  a  sinister  brilliancy  in  their  looks  and  in  their 
gestures;  circulating  through  their  arteries  in  every  globule  of  their 
blood.  .  .  .  I  bring  today  a  new  legend  to  support  this  theory ;  today, 
I  add  a  new  saint  to  the  holy  army  of  martyrs,  for  I  have  to  write  the 
history  of  one  of  those  illustrious  unfortunates,  over-rich  with  poetry 
and  passion,  who  came  after  so  many  others,  to  serve  in  this  dull 
world  the  rude  apprenticeship  of  genius  among  inferior  souls. 

A  lamentable  tragedy  this  Life  of  Edgar  Poe !  His  death  a  horrible 
unravelling  of  the  drama,  where  horror  is  besmutched  with  trivial 
ities  !  All  the  documents  I  have  studied  strengthen  me  in  the  convic 
tion  that  the  United  States  was  for  Poe  only  a  vast  prison  through 
which  he  ran,  hither  and  thither,  with  the  feverish  agitation  of  a  being 
created  to  breathe  in  a  purer  world  [Paris?],  only  a  wild  barbarous 
country — barbarous  and  gas-lit — and  that  his  interior  life,  spiritual 
as  a  poet,  spiritual  even  as  a  drunkard,  was  but  one  perpetual  effort 
to  escape  the  influence  of  the  antipathetical  atmosphere.  .  .  .  We 
might  say  that  from  the  impious  love  of  Liberty  has  been  born  a  new 
tyranny — the  tyranny  of  fools — which,  in  its  insensible  ferocity,  re 
sembles  the  idol  of  Juggernaut. 

Neither  Baudelaire  nor  certain  of  his  confreres  were  in  a 
position  to  throw  stones  even  had  they  been  so  inclined. 
Accepting  as  true  all  that  Griswold  alleged,  they  only  made 


136      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

answer,  "What  Then?"  Certainly  it  was  not  Poe  who  was 
at  fault,  but  this  "parvenue  nation"  incapable  of  appre 
ciating  genius. 

Once  more  I  repeat  my  firm  conviction  that  Edgar  Poe  and  his 
country  were  never  upon  a  level.  The  United  States  is  a  gigantic  and 
infantine  country,  not  unnaturally  jealous  of  the  old  continent.  Proud 
of  its  material  development,  abnormal  and  almost  monstrous,  this 
newcomer  into  history  has  a  naive  faith  in  the  all-powerfulness  of  in 
dustry,  being  firmly  convinced,  moreover,  like  some  unfortunates 
amongst  ourselves,  that  it  will  finish  by  devouring  the  devil  himself. 
Time  and  money  are  there  held  in  extraordinary  esteem;  material 
activity,  exaggerated  almost  to  the  proportions  of  a  national  mania, 
leaves  room  in  their  minds  for  little  that  is  not  of  the  earth. 

Baudelaire  attempted  no  critical  discussion  either  of  the 
facts  of  Poe's  life  or  of  his  works,  and  accepted  everything 
that  related  both  to  his  private  life  and  to  all  he  wrote, 
as  that  of  a  master,  though  a  master  overwhelmed  with 
drugs  and  drink : 

Now,  it  is  incontestable  that,  like  those  fugitive  and  striking  im 
pressions — most  striking  in  their  repetition  when  they  have  been 
most  fugitive — which  sometimes  follow  an  exterior  symptom,  such  as 
the  striking  of  a  clock,  a  note  of  music,  or  a  forgotten  perfume,  and 
which  are  themselves  followed  by  an  event  similar  to  the  event  already 
known,  and  which  occupy  the  same  place  in  a  chain  previously  re 
vealed — like  those  singular  periodical  dreams  which  frequent  our 
slumbers — there  exist  in  drunkenness  not  only  the  entanglements  of 
dreams,  but  whole  series  of  reasonings,  which  have  need  to  reproduce 
themselves,  of  the  medium  which  has  given  them  birth.  If  the  reader 
has  followed  me  without  repugnance,  he  has  already  divined  my 
conclusion.  I  believe  that,  in  many  cases,  not  certainly  in  all,  the  intoxi 
cation  of  Poe  was  a  mnemonic  means,  a  method  of  work,  a  method 
energetic  and  fatal,  but  appropriate  to  his  passionate  nature.  The  poet 
has  learned  to  drink  as  the  laborious  author  exercises  himself  in  filling 
note  books.  He  could  not  resist  the  desire  of  finding  again  those  visions, 
marvelous  or  awful — those  subtle  conceptions  which  he  had  met  be 
fore  in  a  preceding  tempest ;  they  were  old  acquaintances  which  im 
peratively  attracted  him,  and  to  renew  his  knowledge  of  them,  he  took 
a  road  most  dangerous,  but  most  direct.  The  works  that  give  us  so 
much  pleasure  today  were,  in  reality,  the  cause  of  his  death.  .  .  . 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      137 

Upon  the  heart  of  this  literature,  where  the  air  is  rarified,  the  mind 
can  feel  that  vague  anguish,  that  fear  prompt  to  tears,  that  sickness 
of  the  heart,  which  dwells  in  places  vast  and  strange.  Like  our  Eugene 
Delacroix,  who  has  elevated  his  art  to  the  height  of  grand  poetry, 
Edgar  Poe  loves  to  move  his  figures  upon  a  ground  of  green  or  violet 
where  the  phosphorescence  of  putrefaction,  and  the  odour  of  the  hur 
ricane,  reveal  themselves.  Nature  inanimate  participates  of  the  nature 
of  living  beings,  and,  like  it,  trembles  with  a  shiver,  supernatural  and 
galvanic.  Space  is  fathomed  by  opium;  for  opium  gives  a  magic  tinge 
to  all  the  hues,  and  causes  every  noise  to  vibrate  with  the  most  sonor 
ous  magnificence.  Sometimes  glorious  visions,  full  of  light  and  color, 
suddenly  unroll  themselves  in  its  landscape;  and  on  the  furthest 
horizon  line  we  see  oriental  cities  and  palaces,  mist  covered,  in  the 
distance,  which  the  sun  floods  with  golden  showers. 

Baudelaire  may  speak  for  himself  and  his  school ;  these 
apparently  looked  for  inspiration  to  such  sources,  and 
imitated  the  * 'Germanic  horrors"  occasionally  indulged  in 
by  Poe ;  however,  I  would  like  to  have  the  prescription  for 
the  mixture,  or  know  the  brand  of  the  beverage,  that  in 
spired  Poe  when  at  his  best.  Drink  and  drugs,  after  their 
first  stimulating  or  soothing  effect,  stupify.  Their  only 
value  is  in  reviving  those  physically  exhausted  and  in  re 
lieving  mental  unrest.  They  merely  stimulate  and  distort. 

Again  quoting  from  Baudelaire : 

Diderot  is  a  blood-red  author ;  Poe  is  a  writer  of  the  nerves — even 
something  more — and  the  best  I  know.  .  .  .  No  man  has  told  with 
greater  magic  the  exceptions  of  human  life  and  nature,  the  ardors  of  the 
curiosities  of  convalescence,  the  close  of  seasons  charged  with  ener 
vating  splendors,  sultry  weather,  humid  and  misty,  where  the  south 
wind  softens  and  distends  the  nerves,  like  the  chords  of  an  instrument ; 
where  the  eyes  are  filled  with  tears  that  come  not  from  the  heart;  hal 
lucinations  at  first  giving  place  to  doubt,  soon  convinced  and  full  of 
reasons  as  a  book;  absurdity  installing  itself  in  the  intellect,  and  gov 
erning  it  with  a  crushing  logic ;  hysteria  usurping  the  place  of  will,  a 
contradiction  established  between  the  nerves  and  the  mind,  and  mien 
out  of  all  accord  expressing  grief  by  laughter.  He  analyzes  them  where 
they  are  most  fugitive;  he  poises  the  imponderable,  and  describes  in 
that  minute  and  scientific  manner,  whose  effects  are  terrible,  all  that 


138      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

imaginary  world  which  floats  around  the  nervous  man,  and  conducts 
him  on  to  evil. 

Although  Baudelaire  did  not  deny  any  of  Griswold's 
allegations — he  had  not  the  facts,  nor  did  he  feel  the 
necessity  of  any  explanation — he  did  resent,  with  Gallic 
venom,  the  use  Griswold  made  of  his  editorial  authority : 

The  pedagogue  vampire  has  defamed  his  friend  at  full  length  in  an 
enormous  article — wearisome  and  crammed  with  hatred — which  was 
prefixed  to  the  posthumous  edition  of  Poe's  works.  Are  there  then  no 
regulations  in  America  to  keep  curs  out  of  cemeteries? 

Baudelaire's  concludes : 

The  characters  of  Poe,  or  rather  the  character  of  Poe,  the  man  with 
sharpened  faculties,  the  man  with  nerves  relaxed,  the  man  whose  ar 
dent  and  patient  will  bids  defiance  to  difficulties,  whose  glance  is  stead 
fastly  fixed,  with  the  rigidness  of  a  sword,  upon  objects  that  increase 
the  more,  the  more  he  gazes — this  man  is  Poe  himself;  and  his  women, 
all  luminous  and  sickly,  dying  of  a  thousand  unknown  ills,  and  speak 
ing  with  a  voice  resembling  music,  are  still  himself;  or,  at  least,  by 
their  strange  aspirations,  by  their  knowledge,  by  their  incurable 
melancholy,  they  participate  strongly  in  the  nature  of  their  creator. 
As  to  his  ideal  woman — his  Titanide,  she  reveals  herself  under  different 
names,  scattering  in  his,  alas !  too  scanty  poems,  portraits,  or  rather 
modes  of  feeling  beauty,  which  the  temperament  of  the  author  brings 
together,  and  confounds  in  a  unity,  vague  but  sensible,  and  where, 
more  delicately,  perhaps,  than  elsewhere,  glows  that  insatiable  passion 
for  the  beautiful  which  forms  his  greatest  claim,  that  is  to  say,  the 
essence  of  all  his  claims,  to  the  affection  and  respect  of  poets. 

Baudelaire  may  find  all  this  apropos  of  Poe,  but  where 
he  made  this  discovery,  or  what  his  reasons  are  for  drawing 
these  deductions,  puzzles  me.  I  surmise  that  such  con 
clusions  were  the  result  of  a  vermuth  dream. 

Another  Frenchman,  Emile  Lauvriere,  has  placed  upon 
Poe  a  brand  more  disfiguring  than  was  that  of  Griswold ; 
for  it  has  been  assumed  that  his  statements  were  made 
after  a  careful  investigation  of  all  facts,  and  by  a  man 
competent  to  pass  upon  the  psychology  of  Poe. 

Lauvriere  is  a  "Docteur  es  lettres"  and  "Professeur 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      139 

agrege  au  lycee  Charlemagne."  In  1904  he  wrote  a  critical 
study  of  the  Life  and  Works  of  Poe,  in  which  he  attempted 
an  "Etude  de  Psycologie  Pathologique"  as  it  related  to 
Poe's  abnormal  mental  state. 

Lauvriere's  book  extends  over  seven  hundred  pages. 
The  first  three  hundred  deal  with  Poe's  life;  the  other  four 
hundred  contain  a  discussion  of  his  writings. 

In  both  the  first  and  second  divisions  of  this  critical 
study,  Lauvriere  has  formulated  theories  by  which  he 
attempts  to  solve  certain  problems  of  Poe's  life,  and  to 
explain  the  peculiarities  which  he  believes  to  be  charac 
teristic  of  much  that  Poe  wrote.  Accepting  as  true  all  that 
Griswold  alleged,  Lauvriere  has  attempted  to  establish  a 
thesis  that  demonstrates  an  inter-relation  between  the 
abnormalities  described  and  the  things  that  he  asserts  Poe 
wrote  during  the  time  that  his  brain  was  poisoned  by 
stimulants,  or  narcotized  by  drugs. 

His  conclusion  that  Poe  became  a  "madman"  because  of 
a  primarily  disordered  brain,  diseased  but  stimulated  by 
alcohol  or  hallucinated  by  opium,  requires  investigation. 

Because  of  the  fact  that  this  book  was  written  before 
the  publication  of  either  Harrison's  or  Woodberry's 
biographies,  Lauvriere  has  adopted  as  his  authority  the 
memoir  by  Griswold,  and  corroborates  it  by  quotations 
from  Briggs.  The  contributions  of  Ingram  and  Gill  have 
been  ignored ;  apparently  they  did  not  fit  into  his  theory. 
His  assertion  that  Poe's  work  is  merely  the  manifestation 
of  a  disordered  brain  deserves  special  consideration: 

Before  we  continue  the  narrative  of  this  hopelessly  foredoomed  life 
let  us,  for  a  moment,  examine  his  contemporary  work.  We  will  find 
there  the  same  pathetic  role  played  by  the  same  individual,  whose 
haggard  countenance  is  stamped  by  the  imminence  of  insanity,  [les 
traits  a  peine  accentues  predisent  rimmimnence  de  la  folie.]  Always 
there  is  presented  the  same  morbid  hero,  with  his  haggard,  disease- 
stamped  face,  haunted  by  specters;  a  Poe  prematurely  aged  and 
debilitated,  who,  stupified,  sees  in  his  own  pages,  as  in  a  mirror,  a 


140      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

reflection  of  himself  as  he  awaits  the  fate  to  which  he  is  doomed.  The 
same  exaggerated  sensibility,  the  same  overstrung  nerves,  the  same 
profoundly  unbalanced  and  over-excited  imagination,  the  legacy  of  a 
decadent  family  which  had  been  noted  for  the  vigor  of  its  imagination 
and  for  the  ardor  of  its  passions,  and  which,  finally,  because  of  the 
constitutional  evil,  manifested  itself  in  a  swarm  of  abnormal  sensa 
tions;  the  same  inconsistency;  the  same  incoherence  arising  because 
of  his  inability  to  overcome  an  habitual  timidity,  [meme  incon- 
sistance  meme  incoherence  qui  vient  de  futiles  efforts  pour  vaincre 
une  trepidation  habituelle]  with  excessive  nervous  agitation  showing 
itself  by  trembling  and  broken  voice,  or,  brusque  and  hoarse  and  per 
fectly  modulated,  such  as  one  finds  in  the  hopeless  drunkard,  or  in  the 
incorrigible  eater  of  opium.  Why  should  one  further  seek  to  penetrate 
into  this  habitual  and  excessive  reserve,  into  this  dark  and  unbearable 
sorrow  which  reproduces  itself  over  all  that  he  sees  in  the  physical 
universe,  or  in  our  moral  nature,  and  which  over  them  constantly 
casts  its  gloomy  shadows?  Those  inconceivable  and  mysterious  ob 
sessions  of  terror  and  horror  have,  like  an  incubus,  settled  on  his 
heart  causing  him  baseless  alarms.  It  is  into  this  pitiful  condition  he 
sinks  when,  in  that  last  hour  of  life,  he  loses  his  reason  and  must  face 
a  horrible  phantom  of  fear. 

Sometimes,  with  staring  eyes,  in  an  attitude  of  profound  attention, 
he  gazes  into  vacancy  as  if  he  were  listening  to  imaginary  voices, 
again  his  eyes  glow  with  mad  hilarity  attempting  to  hold  in  check  an 
hysterical  seizure  in  which  the  wild  saraband  dance  of  delirious  and 
inchoate  sensations,  maddened  even  to  crime,  which  rise  in  the  sick 
brain  like  the  nightmare  of  a  madman,  when  they  are  aroused  and 
throw  themselves  into  the  whirling  dance,  led  by  those  two  macaber 
and  satanic  demons :  Alcohol  and  Opium. 

It  is  difficult  to  understand  Lauvriere's  application— 
this  dizzy  dance  led  by  macaber  demons,  these  resounding 
words  and  misapplied  metaphors — either  to  Poe  or  to  the 
things  he  wrote.  Apparently,  in  Lauvriere's  mind,  opium, 
alcohol,  madness  and  Poe  were  inextricably  mixed,  and 
his  portrait  betrays  this  to  such  an  extent  that  we  fail  to 
recognize  in  the  likeness  the  slightest  resemblance  to  the 
Poe  we  know,  the  Poe  of  whom  even  Griswold  wrote, 
"His  beauty,  his  readiness,  the  daring  spirit  that  breathed 
around  him  like  a  fiery  atmosphere."  No  testimony  exists 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      141 

either  in  the  known  facts  of  Poe's  life  or  in  the  description 
all  biographers  give  of  his  personal  charm  and  the  bril 
liancy  of  his  conversation,  or  yet  in  the  things  he  wrote, 
that  would  justify  these  over-statements.  It  is  most  dif 
ficult  to  understand  Lauvriere's  reason  for  describing  Poe : 
Tantot  il  reste  pendent  des  heures,  les  yeux  fixes  dans  Vigar- 
ment,  en  une  attitude  de  la  plus  jprofonde  attention  comme 
sil  pretait  loreille  a  des  bruits  imaginaries;  or  his  reason 
for  assuming  that  this  was  a  reproduction  of  the  sensa 
tions  that  haunted  Poe's  mind. 
In  Berenice  Poe  wrote: 

To  muse  for  long  unwearied  hours,  with  my  attention  riveted  to 
some  frivolous  device  on  the  margin  or  in  the  typography  of  a  book ; 
to  become  absorbed,  for  the  better  part  of  a  summer's  day,  in  a  quaint 
shadow  falling  aslant  upon  the  tapestry  or  upon  the  floor ;  lose  myself, 
for  an  entire  night,  in  watching  the  steady  flame  of  a  lamp  or  the 
embers  of  a  fire;  to  dream  away  whole  days  over  the  perfume  of  a 
flower;  to  repeat,  monotonously,  some  common  word,  until  the  sound, 
by  dint  of  frequent  repetition,  ceased  to  convey  any  idea  whatever  to 
the  mind;  to  lose  all  sense  of  motion  or  physical  existence,  by  means 
of  absolute  quiescence  long  and  obstinately  persevered  in:  such  were 
a  few  of  the  most  common  and  least  pernicious  vagaries  induced  by  a 
condition  of  the  mental  faculties,  not,  indeed,  altogether  unparalleled, 
but  certainly  bidding  defiance  to  anything  like  analysis  or  explanation. 

This  extract  from  Berenice  does  not  justify  Lauvriere's 
deductions  nor  will  it  explain  V  effroyable  sarabande  de 
sensations  incoh&rentes,  deliriantes,  affolees  jusquau  crime. 
This  description  was  merely  a  day  dream  of  the  mentally 
indolent,  and  it  well  describes  the  auto-hypnotization 
into  which  all  of  us  fall  when  we  sink  into  revery. 

A  study  of  the  data  upon  which  Lauvriere  based  this  and 
other  statements,  and  from  which  he  drew  his  conclusions, 
makes  it  certain  that  such  verbiage  is  not  all  French 
exaggeration,  nor  was  this  description  written  for  literary 
effect.  He  was  sincere  in  his  beliefs,  but  his  conclusions  were 
based  partly  on  untruthful  allegations  and  partly  on 


142      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

failure  to  understand  scientific  statements  that  can  be 
variously  interpreted.  For  this  reason,  it  is  proper  that 
we  know  what  was  the  foundation  of  his  knowledge, 
and  what  were  the  scientific  truths  on  which  he  based  his 
conclusions.  Lauvriere  describes  the  preparation  he  made 
for  his  special  study : 

When  discussing  such  a  condition,  ordinarily  one  will  say  'Bah! 
c'est  un  malade,'  and  passes  on.  But  we  did  not  care  to  side-step  this 
question.  We  wished  with  a  clear  conscience  personally  to  investigate 
this  matter,  and  to  discuss  it  intelligently,  and  remembering  that  Poe 
was  a  sick  man,  or,  as  Briggs  expressed  it,  'a  psychological  phenome 
non,'  it  occurred  to  us  that  a  study  of  medicine  would  be  necessary 
and  that,  possibly,  a  physician  could  furnish  the  key  to  this  startling 
enigma  that  conjoined  Poe's  life  and  his  work. 

As  our  first  inducement  to  begin  on  this  study,  a  thing  we  little 
foresaw  when  we  entered  upon  this  work,  was  the  intermittent  nature, 
and  frequent  repetition  of  the  brutal  alcoholic  attacks  that  were  so 
prominent  a  symptom  in  the  disease  of  this  poor  poet.  All  the  symp 
toms  of  degeneration  were  so  deeply  graven  in  the  flesh  and  soul  of 
Poe,  they  show  as  plainly  in  his  poor  haggard  face,  the  face  of  an 
inspired  vagabond,  as  they  do  in  the  pages  of  his  immortal  prose  and 
verse.  Mentally,  as  well  as  physically,  this  degeneration  has  left  its 
indelible  mark  upon  his  whole  being.  This  explains  all  his  abnormal 
ities;  his  strength  and  his  weakness;  his  genius  and  his  madness;  his 
defeats  and  his  victories ;  without  them  his  life  and  his  work  resemble 
monstrosities  void  of  understanding;  [monstruosites  vides  de  sens] 
with  them  there  is  no  more  mystery;  everything  is  made  clear,  logical 
and  harmonious.  Although  this  extremely  simple  explanation  of  the 
complicated  problem  was  made  not  without  difficulty,  these  final  con 
clusions  were  not  arrived  at  without  painstaking  study  and  extreme 
labor.  It  proved  to  be  a  new  world  for  exploration:  alienism,  that 
distant  and  terrifying  province  of  scientific  psychology.  Happily  the 
means  for  exploration  were  at  hand,  and  they  served  well  for  one  in 
terested,  but  untrained  in  scientific  research.  For  this  reason  it  proved 
pleasant,  although  it  required  long  months  that  had  to  be  devoted  to 
this  study.  We  did  not  hesitate.  By  reason  of  the  permission  granted 
to  us  by  M.  Brouardel,  we  were  allowed  to  consult,  according  to  our 
needs,  such  specialists  as  Ribot  and  Janet  of  the  College  of  France, 
and  Dr.  Klippel  of  the  Paris  Hospital.  To  them  we  return  thanks  for 
the  information  they  imparted,  and  for  their  considerate  advice. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      143 

While  Lauvriere  deserves  credit  for  the  effort  he  made, 
and  for  his  good  intentions,  the  result  hardly  justified  this 
preparatory  course  of  study. 

A  little  learning  is  a  dangerous  thing; 
Drink  deep,  or  taste  not  the  Pierian  spring. 

Lauvriere  was  a  "Docteur  es  Lettres,"  not  a  Doctor  of 
Medicine.  In  attempting  to  discuss  a  subject  by  its  very 
nature  difficult  and  not  fully  comprehended  by  our  most 
advanced  students,  and  one  concerning  which  so  many 
diverse  and  radically  opposed  theories  are  advanced,  he 
undertook  something  for  which  he  was  not  prepared. 

I  do  not  wish  to  be  understood  as  intimating  that  to 
become  a  competent  alienist  one  must  be  either  a  grad 
uate  in  medicine  or  a  psychiatrist.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
reading  of  a  few  books,  conversations  with  specialists,  or 
association  with  those  qualified  to  speak  with  authority, 
cannot,  in  the  course  of  a  few  months,  prepare  the  most 
eager  investigator  authoritatively  to  discuss  a  subject 
which,  after  years  of  practical  familiarity  and  constant 
association,  its  students  are  forced  to  admit  has  no 
anatomical  foundation,  and  permits  only  of  the  most 
general  theorizing. 

Neither  the  anatomy  of  the  brain  nor  the  physiological 
changes  that  it  undergoes  when  it  functions  normally,  have 
been  definitely  established.  Frequently  it  happens  that 
some  new  stain  upsets  preconceived  ideas  of  cell  arrange 
ment,  their  association  tracts  and  fibrillary  connection. 
Although  anatomists  believe  they  are  making  advances 
in  special  knowledge  of  this  subject,  no  organ  of  the 
human  body  is  less  understood  by  the  physiologist  than 
the  brain.  Unlike  other  departments  of  medicine,  there  is 
no  definitely  accepted  pathology  of  insanity,  nor  even  a 
classification  followed  by  all  who  discuss  mental  diseases. 
We  still  confuse  first  symptoms  with  causation ;  nor  have  we 


144      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

the  slightest  conception  of  what  physiological  changes  un 
derlie  normal  ideation.  Much  less  do  we  understand  those 
changes  in  the  cells  of  the  brain  that  are  responsible  for 
abnormal  psychology.  We  cannot  solve  the  riddle  of 
heredity,  even  though  the  researches  of  Mendel  and  others 
who  amplified  his  observations  have  laid  an  excellent 
foundation  as  far  as  body-characteristics  are  concerned. 
Who  has  laid  down,  or  can  lay  down,  rules  for  guidance  in  the 
reproduction  of  those  qualities  of  head  and  heart  so  neces 
sary  to  the  well-being  of  the  race  ?  We  talk  much  of  eugenic 
laws,  and  various  organizations  learnedly  discuss  ways 
and  means  of  human  improvment.  We  can  breed  for  size, 
or  for  other  physical  qualities;  but  we  are  more  than 
animals.  Brain  is  not  synonymous  with  brawn.  We  must 
not  measure  the  stature  of  Napoleon  or  that  of  Lloyd 
George  by  the  yardstick.  In  that  famous  debate  between 
those  well-known  Georgia  Senators,  Toombs  and  Stephens, 
when  gigantic  Toombs  boasted  that,  if  they  would  only 
grease  Stephens' head  and  tie  back  his  ears,  he  "could  swal 
low  him  whole,"  and  little  Stephens  replied  (borrowing 
from  Scott)  that  "if  he  did,  Toombs  would  have  more 
brains  in  his  belly  than  he  had  in  his  head,"  we  have  a 
memorable  truth.  How  can  we  infuse  into  the  texture  of 
the  brain  those  qualities  that  make  for  nobility  of  char 
acter  and  greatness  of  soul  ?  that  produced  a  Washington, 
and  that  typifies  a  Wilson  ?  What  psychologist  could  have 
arranged  the  mating  that  produced  the  lovable  qualities 
of  a  Goldsmith,  or  the  dominating  personality  of  a  John 
son?  Who  could  have  foretold  the  result  of  the  paternal 
accidents  in  the  life  histories  of  Dickens,  Lincoln,  and 
Mark  Twain?  And  what  soothsayer  could  so  have  read 
the  auspices  as  to  have  foretold  the  result  of  the  mating 
of  a  strolling  actress  (unknown,  and  who,  possibly  like 
Topsy,  "just  growed")  with  the  drunken,  the  degenerate, 
and  the  shiftless  son  of  a  family  "whose  greatest  enemy  had 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        145 

always  been  the  bottle"  ?  The  qualities  of  the  mind,  as  well 
as  their  morbid  reactions,  are  too  delicate  ever  to  be  un 
derstood  or  scientifically  prearranged.  For  the  world  this  is 
fortunate,  however  high  an  inheritance  tax  the  victims 
of  heredity  must  pay.  Eradicate  the  nervous  diathesis, 
suppress  the  hot  blood  that  results  from  the  overdose 
mating  of  neurotics,  or  from  that  unstable  nervous  organi 
zation  due  to  alcoholic  inheritance,  or  even  from  insanity 
and  the  various  forms  of  parental  degeneracy,  and  we 
would  have  a  race  of  stoics — men  without  imagination,  in 
dividuals  incapable  of  enthusiasms,  brains  without  person 
ality,  souls  without  genius.  It  is  possible  to  mate  for  bulk. 
By  selecting  desirable  physical  qualities  we  can  produce  a 
perfect  human  brute,  but  we  have  lost  those  higher  and 
ennobling  gifts  that  have  made  so  much  for  the  world's 
pleasure  and  progress.  Who  could,  or  would,  breed  for  a 
hump-backed  Pope,  or  a  clubfooted  Byron,  a  scrofulous 
Keats,  or  a  soul-obsessed  Poe?  Nature  has  done  fairly 
well  by  us.  Love,  which  mates  opposites,  which  induces 
the  weak  to  cling  to  the  strong,  the  bold  and  reckless  to 
seek  the  timid  and  retiring,  the  bulky  frame  to  search  out 
its  opposite  in  the  small  and  compact  stature,  provides  a 
method  of  selection  more  in  accord  with  natural  laws  than 
any  eugenic  statutes  we  could  enact.  The  tuberculous  and 
the  neurotic  have  their  place  in  Nature's  scheme.  Suppress 
them,  and  we  have  extinguished  the  flower  before  it  has 
fruited.  While  nature  often  throws  these  aside  in  the  first 
generation,  always  in  the  second  or  third  unless  comple 
mentary  mates  are  chosen,  the  genius  in  them  has  given 
to  the  world  much  that  the  world  ill  could  spare. 

Into  this  mesh  of  theories,  and  into  this  quagmire  of 
ignorance  of  Nature's  laws,  Lauvriere  has  entered  boldly 
with  his  newly  acquired  knowledge.  He  attempts  not  only 
to  solve  the  riddle  of  the  mind,  but  confidently  passes  on 
questions  of  heredity.  His  study  of  genius  is  particularly 


146      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

enlightening,  and  the  result  he  reaches  measures  the 
scientific  value  of  his  deductions.  Using  the  translation  of 
Professor  Morris:  "In  short,  everywhere  in  this  temple  of 
madness,  we  witness,  enthralled  by  the  charm  of  a  dan 
gerous  art,  the  fascinating  but  exhausting  spectacle  of  the 
human  faculties,  sensibility,  energy,  intelligence,  imagina 
tion,  reason,  taste,  outraged  in  paroxysms  of  pain.  If  the 
frightful  superiority  of  this  extraordinary  being  comes 
from  genius,  then  genius  is  nothing  but  frenzied  excesses." 
To  Lauvriere,  Poe  presents  a  type  of  genius  in  its  most 
repulsive  form.  He  traces  Poe's  career  from  infancy, 
stupefied  by  gin  and  surrounded  by  the  squalor  and 
poverty-begotten  environments  that  were  the  lot  of  the 
dying  mother,  through  unhappy  boyhood  with  proud 
spirit  chafing  against  restraint,  into  young  manhood  un 
disciplined  by  moral  laws;  and  he  shows  Poe's  matured 
habits  characterized  by  unceasing  dissipation  that  weak 
ened  and  finally  overthrew  a  brain  by  inheritance  ab 
normal. 

Poe,  from  birth,  was  a  degenerate.  He  was  born  under  miserable 
hygienic  conditions  and  inherited  from  his  parents  both  an  alcoholic 
neurosis  and  a  phthisical  constitution.  With  such  an  heredity  this 
abnormal  Richmond  child  presented  a  precocious  intelligence  and 
an  exalted  sentimentality,  with  a  quick  but  intermittent  energy  on 
which  was  laid  the  foundation  of  his  indisciplinable  character.  With 
a  mind  inflated  by  pride  he  passed  an  unstable  youth  immersed  in  a 
series  of  ecstatic,  morbid  trances,  and  mystic  visions  commingled  with 
expansive  ideas.  Following  closely  upon  such  dreams  came  a  series  of 
rash  and  unconsidered  adventures  until  defeats,  responsibilities,  and 
misery  made  of  the  rich,  adopted,  city  child,  of  the  proud  poet,  the 
brilliant  idealist  and  dreamer  a  deserter,  a  wandering  vagabond 
without  hearth  or  home,  an  outcast,  a  madman,  [un  boheme  sans  feu 
ni  lieu,  un  declasse  un  detraque.] 

Is  he  to  be  regarded  as  a  man  insane  or  as  a  genius,  this  strange, 
unbalanced  and  impossible  personality;  a  man  whose  brain  wanders 
on  the  border  line  between  crime  and  genius?  It  is  doubtless  true  that 
toward  the  end  of  his  life  and  of  his  sad  career,  this  poor  decadent 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      147 

was  a  partially  reasoning  madman  whose  double,  circular  insanity 
was  allowed  to  grow  greater  and  greater,  and  there  came  recurring 
periods  of  depression  complicated  by  outbreaks  of  erotomania. 

In  this  estimate,  evidently  based  on  Poe's  own  words, 
which  Lauvriere  has  little  more  than  paraphrased,  and 
which  we  find  in  the  opening  description  of  William  Wil 
son,  it  is  evidently  assumed  that  Poe  was  giving  an  accur 
ate  autobiographic  statement — a  thing  impossible  to 
conceive  except  by  one  who  assumes  that  everything  Poe 
wrote  was  only  his  reflected  self,  and  that  he  could  give 
forth  no  other  sentiments  except  those  he  individually  felt : 

I  am  come  of  a  race  whose  imaginative  and  easily  excitable  tem 
perament  had  at  all  times  rendered  them  remarkable;  and,  in  my 
earliest  infancy,  I  gave  evidence  of  having  fully  inherited  the  family 
character.  As  I  advanced  in  years  it  was  most  strongly  developed; 
becoming,  for  many  reasons,  a  cause  of  serious  disquietude  to  my 
friends  and  of  positive  injury  to  myself.  I  grew  self-willed,  addicted 
to  the  wildest  caprices,  and  a  prey  to  the  most  ungovernable  passions. 
Weakminded,  and  beset  with  constitutional  infirmities  akin  to  my 
own,  my  parents  could  do  but  little  to  check  the  evil  propensities 
which  distinguished  me. 

Poe,  in  writing  William  Wilson,  did  exhibit  consummate 
psychological  acumen.  It  is  a  story  dreadful  in  its  keen 
psycho-analysis,  but  it  was  not  necessarily  a  personal 
experience,  though  he  wrote  in  the  first  person. 

Lauvriere  bases  not  only  the  conception,  but  even  the 
ideation  of  much  that  Poe  wrote  upon  his  abnormal  psych 
ology  while  under  the  influence  of  drugs  and  stimulants : 

We  believe  that  the  truth  is  most  difficult  to  arrive  at  for  the 
reason  that  spiritual  superiority  is  the  infinitely  variable  product  of 
mental  faculties,  more  or  less  abnormal.  .  .  .  There  is  no  human 
faculty  the  morbid  development  of  which  may  not  end  either  in 
genius  or  insanity,  and,  at  times,  it  is  difficult  to  draw  the  line  of 
demarcation  separating  them.  Not  to  mention  the  alternating  states 
of  exaltation  and  depression,  equally  characteristic  of  this  state  of 
nervous  tension,  it  frequently  happens  that  the  artistic  vision  changes 
into  an  ocular  hallucination;  the  inspiration  of  the  poet  into  delirious 


148      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

ramblings ;  the  contemplations  of  the  philosopher  into  ecstatic  visions ; 
the  unbending  logic  of  the  scientist  into  the  reasoning  paranoia;  the 
imperious  energy  of  the  man  of  action  into  a  criminal  impulsion :  and 
how  often,  and  in  how  many  celebrated  cases,  has  not  this  fated 
change  come  with  some  tragic  denouement  that  has  startled  the 
world?  Between  these  two  orbits  of  mental  revolution,  great  as  these 
extremes  may  be,  there  exists,  for  the  genius,  a  large  neutral  zone 
where  these  differences,  in  the  degree  of  the  nervous  and  mental  mani 
festations,  make  their  psychological  relationship  of  less  importance 
than  are  the  practical  consequences  that  may  result.  In  the  midst  of 
this  questionable  zone  floats  the  morbid  genius  of  Poe.  It  was  en 
dowed  with  this  distinctive  precocity,  and  with  the  fatal  predeter 
mined  course  characteristic  of  innate  tendencies.  It  possesses  for  an 
unstable  basis  morbid  sensibility  as  greedy  of,  as  it  is  susceptible  to, 
intense  emotional  states.  From  birth  to  death  it  balances  between 
conditions  of  ecstasy  and  melancholy,  and  this  was  the  origin  both  of 
Poe's  poetic  inspirations  and  of  his  fantastic  creations;  of  his  literary 
dogmas  and  of  his  synthetical  metaphysical  creations.  Because  of 
these  alternating  conditions  both  in  his  prose  and  verse,  come  those 
passages  of  unutterable  despair,  as  well  as  those  vibrating  with  the 
exhilaration  of  life.  From  this  comes  that  glowing  mystic  cult  which 
unites  beauty  with  death  but  ends  by  confounding  them.  From  this 
influence  come  seraphic  lovers  filled  with  platonic  dreams  rather  than 
inspired  by  passion.  From  this  arises  those  macaber  apparitions 
exaggerated  because  of  the  emanations  of  alcohol  and  opium.  From 
this,  also,  comes  those  tremulous  excesses  of  a  degenerate  character, 
a  prey  to  the  most  contradictory  forces.  On  this  doubly  unstable 
foundation  his  poetry,  from  its  first  childish  prattle  till  its  last  senile 
ramblings,  always  sings  its  sad  melodies  that,  rising  from  unconscious 
depths,  survive  reason.  In  his  criticisms  there  is  a  mixture  of  bitter 
intolerance  and  of  proud,  suspicious  egotism.  His  stories  abound  with 
hallucinatory  visions  of  fear,  and  of  obsessions  that  lead  to  criminal 
acts  and,  occasionally,  are  characterized  by  adventurous  flights  of 
intuition  and  marvelous  'chimeres  de  1' imagination.'  Even  in  his 
most  grotesque  mood,  grinning  behind  his  mask,  his  macaber  visions 
and  deep  sadness  lie  hidden ;  and,  in  his  excited  discussions  of  the  most 
abstruse  problems,  he  erects  on  a  frail  and  emotional  basis  the  most 
fantastic  structures  of  occult  pantheism. 

The  clarity  of  Poe's  reasoning,  and  his  powers  of  analy 
sis  as  displayed  by  his  solution  of  cryptograms,  as  well  as 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY     149 

in  many  of  his  tales,  disprove  this  generalization  of  Lauv- 
riere.  He  has  strangely  ignored  the  keenness  of  the  mental 
processes  that  Poe  must  have  employed  in  writing  such 
stories  as  The  Gold  Bug  and  the  Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue, 
and  the  imaginative  qualities  displayed  in  The  Domain  of 
Arnheim.  Nor  has  he  properly  understood  and  differen 
tiated  the  varying  mental  states  Poe  delineated  in  The 
Black  Cat  and  The  Tell  Tale  Heart.  To  use  any  of  these 
stories,  or  that  masterly  description  of  an  overwrought 
nervous  depressive  state,  The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher 
(which  in  a  certain  way  might  have  been  autobiographic) 
as  proof,  or  even  as  an  illustration  of  a  mental  condition 
brought  on  by  the  overuse  of  alcohol  and  opium,  is  a 
psychological  crime.  It  can  only  be  explained  by  Lauv- 
riere's  exaggerated  belief  in  the  value  of  the  special  studies 
he  made.  Our  investigations  into,  the  effect  of  even  small 
quantities  of  alcohol  in  retarding  mental  concepts,  must 
have  been  well  within  his  knowledge.  That  the  brain  could 
have  so  functioned  as  to  produce  results  that  required  the 
highest  idealizations  and  the  strongest  logical  faculties,  is 
the  best  evidence  that  it  was  not  dulled  by  alcoholic 
poisoning. 

This  thrice-repeated  dancing  skeleton  of  Macaber, 
which  Lauvriere  so  insistently  dangles  before  us,  may  have 
been  Germanic  in  its  conception,  but  it  is  essentially 
French  in  its  later  development,  and  in  this  peculiar 
method  of  application. 

While  it  is  true  that,  upon  occasion,  Poe  drank  to  excess, 
and  that,  in  time,  these  frequently  repeated,  alcoholically 
poisoned  drenchings  did  set  up  organic  changes  in  the 
brain  cells  and  their  coverings,  these  circumstances  added 
no  brilliancy  to  Poe's  mental  faculties;  on  the  contrary, 
they  slowly  and  insidiously  unfitted  him  for  his  best  work. 
Although  there  were  repeated  acute  mental  disturbances 
they  were  of  short  duration.  At  no  time,  could  Poe  have 


150      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

been  classified  as  a  "madman,"  or  was  he  a  "monster." 
The  vigor  of  Lauvriere's  epithets  carries  him  beyond  a  sci 
entific  pronouncement.  Within  certain  limits,  psychiatrists 
are  agreed  on  fundamental  propositions,  and  accept  as  an 
established  fact  the  close  relationship  of  diseases  originat 
ing  in  the  nervous  diathesis ;  further  than  this  they  are  by 
no  means  in  accord.  We  recognize  groups  of  symptoms, 
or  "syndromes,"  as  characterizing  certain  nervous  states, 
but,  at  best,  we  do  not  more  than  generalize  in  our  at 
tempts  to  classify  them.  Beyond  this,  at  times  we  seriously 
differ  when  specific  claims  are  made  as  to  definite  causa 
tion,  or  as  to  the  modus  operandi  of  brain  functioning. 
There  are  as  many  theories  as  there  are  text-books. 

Much  less  this  dreamer,  deaf  and  blind, 
Named  man,  may  hope  some  truth  to  find, 
That  bears  relation  to  the  mind. 
For  every  worm  beneath  the  moon 
Draws  different  threads,  and  late  and  soon 
Spins,  toiling  out  his  own  cocoon. 

Lauvriere's  error  consists  in  his  attempt  concretely  to 
apply  these  generalizations  and  his  excess  of  faith  in  the 
soundness  of  the  theories  he  has  absorbed.  He  accepts  as 
true  all  that  has  been  alleged,  and  admits  all  into  his  dis 
cussion  as  a  basis  for  further  generalization.  In  this  way, 
he  has  erected  a  structure  both  "arabesque  and  grotesque" 
in  which  he  has  attempted  to  domicile  Poe. 

His  final  estimate  measures  the  psychological  acumen 
of  the  man. 

Beneath  this  web  of  contradictory  statements,  the  character  of 
Poe  seems  to  be  an  enigma :  an  unreal  and  an  unbelievable  personality. 
Some  describe  him  as  a  man  false,  cruel,  cynical ;  more  devil  than  hu 
man,  whose  odious  actions  seem  to  arise  from  a  monstrous  perversion. 
Others  describe  him  as  a  peaceful  friend,  generous,  invariably  kind, 
cheerful  and  courteous :  a  model  in  all  that  concerns  social  and  domes 
tic  virtues;  and  that,  in  addition  to  this,  he  was  the  soul  of  honor. 
Which  of  these  opinions  shall  we  accept?  Whom  of  his  biographers 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      151 

are  we  to  believe?  In  our  opinion,  both.  It  is  not  wise  to  adopt  the 
middle  course  and  thus  to  efface  an  individuality  which  nature  has  so 
markedly  accentuated.  Whether  or  not  we  like  it  we  must  accept  this 
double  personality  as  a  fact,  and  not  as  an  exaggeration;  and,  further, 
that  they  alternated  the  one  with  the  other.  Is  it  not  a  matter  of 
common  knowledge  that  the  dipsomaniac,  whether  drinking  or  ab 
stinent,  resembles  a  man  with  two  personalities  inhabiting  the  same 
body  ?  one  steady,  sober,  laborious,  even  austere ;  the  other  only  half 
conscious,  almost  insane,  a  prey  to  all  follies,  to  all  excesses?  This 
double  personality  has  been  compared  to  a  lighthouse  that  has  two 
differently  colored  lights  and,  according  to  the  disk  through  which 
the  light  shines,  the  rays  appear  red  or  blue.  For  this  reason  this 
remarkable  man,  who,  to  his  tavern  companions  appeared  to  be  little 
else  than  a  degraded  drunken  sot,  lacking  human  reason  and  moral 
sense,  was,  in  the  eyes  of  his  friends  and  admirers,  a  poor  misunder 
stood  genius  who  was  calumniated,  and,  for  that  reason,  so  much  the 
more  worthy  of  admiration  and  sympathy.  These  two  views  cannot 
possibly  be  reconciled,  and  we  must  accept  both  as  equally  true :  two 
aspects  of  this  Janus  with  the  double  face. 

There  is,  however,  a  seriously  complicating  factor.  As  we  have 
before  remarked,  dipsomania  is  nothing  but  an  inherited  form  of 
insanity,  and  it  may  present  itself  under  many  aspects.  In  many 
cases,  besides  the  more  or  less  constant  oscillation  between  melan 
cholic  depression  and  maniacal  exaltation,  there  are  a  number  of 
eccentric  deviations  which  cross  one  another  because  of  acquired  or 
inherited  degeneration.  One  should,  for  this  reason,  not  speak  of 
duality  in  the  presence  of  this  mental  incoherence,  but  rather  of  the 
plurality  of  the  ego,  the  breaking  up  of  human  personality,  and  the 
return  of  the  individual  ego  to  initial  chaos  [Effritement  de  la  per- 
sonnalite  humaine,  retour  de  la  colonie  individuelle  au  chaos  initial.] 
'An  essential  and  striking  clinical  fact,'  says  Dr.  Magnan,  'is  the 
coexistence  in  the  same  individual  patient  of  more  or  less  marked 
obsessions,  occasionally  present  at  the  same  time,  more  frequently 
separated  and  exhibiting  themselves  at  various  periods  of  life.  This 
peculiarity  is  especially  to  be  noted  and  is  illuminating  because  it 
makes  clear  and  fully  explains  the  nature  of  these  morbid  manifes 
tations.  When  one  thoroughly  investigates  the  lives  of  these  patients 
it  is  only  exceptionally  that  only  one  syndrome  is  found.  It  is  not  rare 
to  find  several  coinciding  syndromes.  Generally  there  is  no  law  gov 
erning  this  association,  and  their  only  point  of  relationship  is  in 
their  origin.  The  more  one  observes  the  more  frequently  one  finds 


15-2      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

examples  of  this  multiplication.  If  all  of  these  syndromes,  thus  co 
existing,  succeed  and  multiply  themselves  infinitely,  it  can  only  be 
because  of  the  basic  fact  of  their  having  originated  from  the  same 
morbid  condition,  and  that  they  are  the  result  of  cerebrospinal 
automatism.  '  Thus  through  the  destructive  agency  of  suffering  and  un- 
happiness,  of  overwork  and  excesses  of  all  kinds,  this  poor  personality 
of  Poe,  so  sensitively  and  so  impulsively  organized  and  so  badly  co 
ordinated,  began  by  degrees  to  show  evidence  of  disorganization.  It 
was  for  this  reason  that  he  began  to  show  evidences  of  mental  dis 
turbance  complicated  by  such  impulses  which,  originally,  he  had  under 
control,  but  which  now  destroyed  the  general  harmony.  Slowly  there 
developed  evidences  of  decay  in  his  fragile  and  unstable  individuality. 
From  the  fact  of  this  loss  of  mental  control  comes  the  heartbreaking 
spectacle  of  a  mind  based  originally  on  a  groundwork  of  morbid  sensi 
bility,  with  time  growing  more  diseased,  with  constantly  increasing 
symptoms  characterized  by  obsessions,  impulsions,  and  morbid  fears ; 
ideas  of  persecution  and  delusions  of  grandeur — all  symptoms  of  a 
hopeless  insanity. 

By  neither  absorption  nor  experience  did  Lauvriere 
understand  more  than  the  most  general  rudiments  of  a 
subject  that  no  one  fully  comprehends.  In  attempting  to 
apply  these  to  Poe's  particular  psychology  he  accepted  as 
definitely  established  truths  the  most  generally  applied 
theories.  It  was  not  altogether  because  of  his  dependence 
on  Griswold  for  the  facts  of  Poe's  life  that  he  wrote,  "Sa 
vie  et  son  oeuvre  apparaissment  commes  des  monstruosities 
vides  de  sens."  Surely  Poe's  own  work  was  open  to  him: 
had  he  not  been  blinded  by  scientific  aphorisms,  basically 
true  but  misapplied,  he  could  not  have  drawn  the  con 
clusions  he  did. 

Lauvriere's  special  study  of  dipsomania  is  based  on  ex 
tracts  and  statements  equally  distorted.  In  copying  from 
Magnan,  and  in  elaborating  on  that  excerpt  as  applicable 
to  Poe,  Lauvriere  is  in  serious  error.  While  it  is  a  matter  of 
every-day  experience,  authoritatively  established  by  scien 
tific  knowledge,  that  a  man  suddenly  may  be  seized  by 
an  obsession  that  compels  him  to  seek  oblivion  in  some 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY       153 

form  of  narcosis,  alcoholic  or  drugged,  and  that,  during 
this  time,  he  may  sin  grievously  against  the  moral  laws, 
this  fact  does  not  make  him  either  a  madman  or,  neces 
sarily,  a  degenerate ;  although  it  is  established  with  equal 
definiteness  that  such  attacks,  frequently  indulged  in  and 
unduly  prolonged,  may  induce  organic  changes  in  the 
tissues  that  compose  the  cerebrum,  and  cause  brain  weak 
ness  resulting  in  acute  mental  disturbance. 

Lauvriere,  rightly  diagnosing  Poe's  inherited  disease  to 
have  been  dipsomania,  has  made  a  special  study  of  this 
mental  state : 

'Dipsomania  is  one  of  the  evils  following  in  the  train  of  hereditary 
insanity,  heredity  always  dominating  as  a  predisposing  factor  in  its 
causation :  all  such  patients  are  predisposed  to  insanity  by  reason  of 
their  ancestry,  insofar  as  we  have  seen,  or  can  determine.  Should  one 
search  into  their  early  history  it  is  found  that,  even  in  childhood,  they 
have  shown  peculiarities  of  character  and  abnormalities  of  mind  which 
distinguish  them  from  other  children  of  the  same  age,  though  raised 
under  the  same  social  conditions.  One  of  these  characteristics  is  a 
pronounced  precocity. 

Such  individuals  are  solitary,  live  apart,  concentrate  on  special 
subjects,  and,  as  a  rule,  are  unbalanced,  with  a  predisposition  to 
melancholy.  They  are  especially  attracted  by  whatever  is  fantastic. 
With  few  exceptions  they  belong  to  that  class  of  degenerates  known  as 
reasoning  idiots.' 

Must  we  not,  in  reading  these  lines,  admit  that,  in  addition  to  these 
leading  characteristics,  the  unfortunate  Poe  possessed  all  these  second 
ary  traits  which  so  indelibly  and  cruelly  marked  the  physiognomy 
of  this  hereditary  madman,  doomed  not  only  to  abnormal  mental 
peculiarities  but  especially  to  dipsomaniacal  fury. 

Lauvriere  has  taken  a  very  broad  generalization  of 
Magnan's,  which  possibly  was  intended  as  a  reference  to 
"psychoneuroses,"  and  has  used  it  as  proof  that  *7a  Dip- 
somanie  nest  quun  symptbme  de  la  folie  hereditaire. 
The  explanation  given  of  the  duality  of  Poe's  personality, 
technically  correct,  assumed  as  true  statements  concerning 


154      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

the  facts  of  Poe's  life  that  had  no  existence  except  in 
Griswold's  untrue  assertions.  In  his  scientific  enthusiasm, 
Lauvriere  fails  to  take  into  account  some  things  that  are 
a  matter  of  common  knowledge.  Possibly  a  study  of  the 
context  accompanying  the  excerpt  from  Magnan  would 
show  that  Lauvriere's  interpretation  is  misleading.  It 
certainly  is  not  a  fact  that  syndromes  typifying  definite 
neuroses  are  interchangeable;  nor  do  several  of  these 
manifest  themselves  in  the  same  individual  either  at  the 
same  time  or  at  different  periods  of  his  life  history.  One 
who  inherits  sick  headache  does  not  have  epilepsy  as  a 
complicating  factor,  however  closely  related  be  their 
origin.  Neurasthenia  remains  neurasthenia  and  by  no 
means,  directly  or  indirectly,  does  it  necessarily  change 
into  other  neuroses.  Dipsomania  is  not  a  term  synony 
mous  with  insanity ;  neither  by  heredity  nor  directly  does 
it  bear  a  closer  relation  to  mental  diseases  than  do  the 
other  neuroses.  Should  a  mental  disturbance  develop 
because  of  changed  cerebral  circulation,  this  is  directly 
due  to  an  organic  change  produced  because  of  meningeal 
involvement,  whereas  insanity  is  essentially  a  functional 
disturbance,  without  an  organic  basis,  and  having  no  dis 
coverable  pathological  changes  as  a  foundation.  Dipso 
mania  has,  as  a  predisposing  factor,  not  insanity,  but  a 
direct  alcoholic  inheritance.  To  call  dipsomaniacs  insane, 
or  to  class  them  among  the  mentally  unsound,  is  not 
justified  by  our  experience,  even  though,  theoretically,  they 
belong  to  the  same  group  and,  at  times,  do  show  traces  of 
nervous  instability  with  occasional  irrational  acts.  Had 
this  unsoundness  taken  the  form  of  megrim,  no  such  repre 
hensible  term  would  have  been  applied. 

To   further   make   plain   Poe's   condition,    Lauvriere 
quotes  Barine: 

Recently,  Arvede  Barine,  in  three  brilliant  articles  overflowing 
with  generous  enthusiasm,  believed  he  had  found  in  dipsomania, 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      155 

alone,  the  key  to  this  enigma.  But  this  dipsomania  of  Poe,  as  we  have 
stated,  can  not  be  regarded  as  a  form  of  drunkenness;  rather  it  is 
absolutely  the  result  of  alcoholic  degeneration  and  is  in  fact  a  general 
disease  of  the  mind.  .  .  .  It  is  in  vain  that  the  frightened  victim  [of 
dipsomania]  repeatedly  attempts  to  regain  self  control,  and  takes 
oaths  of  reformation  in  attempting  to  strengthen  his  will-power  over 
this  alcoholic  compulsion — an  enemy  that  has  now  become  a  part  of 
his  flesh. 

In  spite  of  all  his  efforts  the  vice  persists  and,  unobtrusively,  it 
accomplishes  its  task  by  slowly  undermining  his  bodily  functions; 
with  an  unstrung  nervous  system  he  becomes  progressively  weakened 
physically,  and  there  only  remains  moral  insensibility  to  the  finer 
things  of  life,  while  all  that  is  left  is  mental  anarchy.  There  is  a  feverish 
activity  which  ends  in  hopeless  impotence,  and,  in  place  of  ambitions 
realized,  only  heart-breaking  disappointments.  It  ends  in  hopeless 
weakness.  There  comes  fierce  criticisms  or  exalted  praise;  monomania 
of  persecution,  or  the  brilliant  sparkling  of  a  supreme  genius;  sensa 
tional  mystification,  or  a  tenacious  pursuit  of  gigantic  projects. 

Although,  occasionally,  it  happens  that  dipsomaniacs 
give  evidence  of  a  disturbed  mentality,  by  no  possible  theory 
can  they  be  called  madmen.  I  have  many  friends — lawyers, 
physicians,  occasionally  clergymen,  and  men  prominent 
in  social  and  business  life — who,  possessing  exceptional 
mental  endowments,  are  the  victims  of  this  inheritance. 
Frequently  they  succeed  in  fighting  off  their  periodical 
seizures;  yet,  when  the  obsession  does  overwhelm  them 
they  will  disappear  for  a  few  days  or  for  weeks.  What 
happens  during  this  period  does  not  concern  the  world — 
as  a  rule.  Whether  they  are  able  to  remain  in  control  of 
their  distraught  nerves,  or  whether  they  are  swept  away 
by  the  impetuosity  of  uncontrollable  compulsions,  they 
are  equally  sufferers  from  an  hereditary  neurosis.  By  no 
method  of  reasoning  can  this  be  considered  tantamount 
to  insanity ;  nor  justly  can  they  be  called  insane,  although 
at  times  they  may  appear  irrational,  or  be  irresponsible. 

Lauvriere's  inclusion  of  dipsomania,  insanity,  moral 
abnormalities,  and  genius  in  the  same  class  can  not  be 


156      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

supported  by  any  alienistic  theory  with  which  I  am 
familiar,  however  closely  they  may  be  related  basically; 
nor  the  further  fact  that  they  occasionally  are  associated 
in  the  same  patient  because  of  some  intercurrent,  tem 
porary  circumstance.  His  inclusion  of  men  of  genius  is  in 
line  with  the  theory  of  certain  sensational  writers  whose 
ideas  have  never  been  accepted  by  alienists.  In  no  cir 
cumstances  can  their  mental  state  come  under  the  usually 
accepted  definition  of  insanity:  "A  condition  of  intellect 
ual  disturbance  characterized  by  delusions  out  of  which 
the  patients  cannot  be  reasoned." 

Yet  Lauvriere  furnishes  a  long  list  of  names  of  those 
whom  he  includes  in  his  classification,  especially  many 
English  writers.  Among  these  are  Swift,  Johnson,  Blake, 
Burton,  Rochester  and  others,  and  he  adduces  evidence  of 
their  mental  unsoundness.  That  he  excludes  much  of  French 
literature  from  the  taint  of  such  origin  is  noteworthy : 

If  French  literature  present  less  abnormal  talent  and  genius,  it  is 
probably  because  the  French  spirit  is  more  moderate  and  has  been, 
for  a  long  period,  under  the  moral  discipline  of  the  XVI I  century. 

Evidently  a  nation  cannot  judge  of  its  susceptibility  to 
such  a  charge  more  discriminatingly  than  can  an  indi 
vidual.  My  own  conception  of  French  psychology  preceding 
and  during  the  times  of  Louis  XIV  is  somewhat  different. 

It  is  true  that  many  names  mentioned  by  Lauvriere 
have  legends  associated  with  them  that  would  indicate 
peculiarities  of  character  which  differentiate  them  from 
the  standards  we  have  adopted  and  by  which  we  judge 
the  average  man.  Abnormal  development  of  one  particular 
faculty  is  regarded  as  a  "gift";  yet  it  presupposes  a  cor 
responding  deficiency  in  some  other  mental  quality.  There 
is  no  such  thing  as  a  "universal  genius."  The  brilliant 
orator,  the  musical  genius,  and  the  gifted  painter  are  not,  as 
a  rule,  characterized  by  "common  sense";  and  frequently 
they  show  a  deficiency  of  mental  poise  because  they  lack 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY       157 

some  prosaic  quality  with  which  the  average  individual  is 
endowed.  An  unbiased  and  unsympathetic  investigation 
into  the  life  history  of  most  of  our  great  men,  whether  of 
letters,  science,  or  the  arts,  would  exhibit  many  personal 
peculiarities,  if  not  mental  abnormalities.  While,  possibly, 
the  "strict  moral  discipline  of  the  XVI I  century  "may  have 
diminished  this  tendency  among  the  French,  Lauvriere 
finds  it  even  there.  Nor  does  he  fail  to  cite  the  authority 
of  antiquity  as  proof  of  "the  insanity  of  genius"  : 

This  question  is  as  old  as  the  world.  The  ancients  saw  no  differ 
ence  between  the  revelations  of  the  wise-men  and  the  ravings  of  the 
mad-men.  For  this  reason  they  believed  that  the  delusions  induced 
by  the  gods  were  more  trustworthy  than  were  the  deductions  which 
were  the  result  of  human  thought.  .  .  .  There  is  a  third  delirium, 
known  as  inspiration  which,  entirely  enthusing  a  pure  soul,  animates 
and  transports  it.  Nullum  magnum  ingenium  sine  mixtura  dementiae 
was  an  adage  evidencing  the  wisdom  of  the  ancients. 

Lauvriere  gives  this  judgment  of  Poe  and  his  writings  : 
The  important  question  of  the  relationship  of  genius  to  insanity 
comes  so  definitely  in  the  case  of  Poe,  that  Poe  himself  has  asked  it. 
For  this  reason  we  cannot  avoid  it :  let  us  treat  it  frankly,  not  with  the 
expectation  of  an  impossible  solution  but  in  the  hope  of  casting  on  it 
the  light  of  our  own  investigations  and  that  of  many  others. 

The  whole  monstrous  work  trembles  beneath  a  wind  of  madness, 
and  is  only  held  together  by  some  harmonious  law  of  logic  and  by  the 
secret  virtue  of  marvelous  artifice.  But  so  great  is  his  art,  which 
triumphs  over  madness,  that,  from  the  coldest  of  judges,  comes  the 
verdict :  'No,  this  extraordinary  man  who,  in  a  few  works,  has  given  to 
humanity  some  of  its  rarest  thrills  and  supremest  emotions,  was  indeed 
mad ;  or  if  the  word  genius  really  means  originality,  there  was  in  his 
madness  an  inseparable  as  well  as  an  undeniable  mixture  of  genius.' 

This  is  an  outrage  on  the  memory  of  Poe  comparable 
only  to  the  verbal  assault  of  Griswold.  That  it  is  the  result 
of  ignorance  and  not  of  malevolence  may  abate  its  moral 
turpitude  but  it  does  not  excuse  the  act.  It  is  due  the 
good  name  of  Poe  that  this  stigma  on  his  memory  be 
removed,  provided  a  fair  investigation  of  the  facts  of  Poe's 


158      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

life  show  that  it  is  undeserved.  It  is  certain  that  Lauv- 
riere's  psychological  studies  do  not  justify  him  in  finding 
this  verdict. 

That  this  work  of  Lauvriere  must  possess  merit  as 
literature,  irrespective  of  its  scientific  or  critical  value,  is 
evident  by  the  great  reputation  this  study  has  achieved  in 
France,  and  the  tribute  paid  it  when  it  was  crowned  by 
the  French  Academy.  Whether  or  not  it  has  been  equally 
honored  by  French  alienists,  I  do  not  know. 

If  the  crown  with  which  this  work  has  been  distinguished 
was  bestowed  for  its  literary  merits,  probably  the  award 
was  just ;  if  for  its  value  as  a  contribution  to  the  scientific 
study  of  Poe's  psychology,  I  dissent.  Further,  as  an  alien 
ist  I  claim  that  the  jewels  adorning  this  crown  are  either  of 
synthetic  manufacture  or  they  are  composed  of  paste. 


Immediately  upon  Poe's  death,  Griswold  announced 
that  he  had  been  selected  by  Poe  to  be  his  literary  executor. 
He  sought  Mrs.  Clemm,  obtained  access  to  all  of  Poe's  manu 
scripts,  letters,  books  and  papers  of  every  description,  and 
undertook  the  task  of  collecting  and  editing  all  that  Poe 
had  written  and  published.  From  these  papers  Griswold 
selected  those  he  believed  worth  preserving.  Estimated 
by  the  new  material  published,  either  this  collection  of 
Poe  remainders  was  small,  or,  in  the  judgment  of  this  liter 
ary  editor,  it  was  without  value.  In  this  republication  certain 
reviews  were  suppressed,  and  others  were  modified  either 
by  Poe  before  his  death  or  by  his  editor,  Griswold.  These 
manuscripts  were  never  returned. 

By  what  means  Griswold  succeeded  in  gaining  posses 
sion  of  "all"  Poe's  papers,  and  for  what  reason  he  wished  to 
edit  them  and  to  preserve  them  when  past  differences 
were  so  notorious,  deserves  a  much  fuller  discussion  than 
this  question  has  received. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      159 

Woodberry  barely  refers  to  the  matter,  simply  stating : 

Before  leaving  Fordham  he  [Poe]  wrote  requests  that  Griswold 
should  superintend  the  collection  of  his  works,  and  that  Willis  should 
write  such  a  biographical  notice  as  should  be  deemed  necessary. 

If  Poe  wrote  such  a  note,  Griswold  did  not  receive  it. 
Griswold's  own  statement  is  explicit  and  definite : 

I  would  gladly  have  declined  a  trust  imposing  so  much  labor,  for  I 
had  been  compelled  by  ill  health  to  solicit  the  indulgence  of  my  pub 
lishers,  who  had  many  thousand  dollars  in  an  unfinished  work  under 
my  direction ;  but  when  I  was  told  by  several  of  his  intimate  friends 
—among  others  by  the  family  of  S.  D.  Lewis,  Esq., — that  he  had  long 
been  in  the  habit  of  expressing  a  desire  that  in  the  event  of  his  death 
I  should  be  his  editor,  I  yielded  to  the  apparent  necessity. 

Griswold  never  stated  that  he  had  been  directly  asked 
to  officiate  in  this  capacity,  nor  that  he  had  received  such 
request  by  letter.  Had  he  been  directly  approached 
he  would  not  apologetically  have  published  a  number  of 
irrelevant  business  letters,  not  always  dated,  which  he 
prefixed  to  his  memoir  in  order  to  prove  that  he  was  on 
friendly  terms  with  Poe. 

For  some  reason  Griswold  took  and  retained  Poe's 
private  papers  and  MSS.  Gill,  basing  his  statement  on 
letters  and  direct  communications  personally  made  to  him 
by  Mrs.  Clemm,  says : 

It  was  simply  the  act  of  a  designing  and  unscrupulous  man' 
prompted  by  hatred  and  greed  of  gain,  taking  advantage  of  a  helpless 
woman,  unaccustomed  to  business,  to  defraud  her  of  her  rights,  and 
gratify  his  malice  and  his  avarice  at  her  expense.  A  small  sum  of 
money  having  been  given  to  Mrs.  Clemm  in  exchange  for  Poe's  private 
papers,  Dr.  Griswold  draws  up  a  paper  for  Mrs.  Clemm  to  sign,  an 
nouncing  his  appointment  as  Poe's  literary  executor.  This  is  duly 
signed  by  Mrs.  Clemm  and  printed  over  her  signature  in  the  published 
edition  of  Poe's  works.  .  .  .  Mrs.  Clemm,  at  the  time  she  signed  the 
paper  which  she  scarcely  understood,  had  no  idea  that  Dr.  Griswold 
had  any  intention  of  supplementing  Mr.  Willis'  obituary  with  any 
memoir  by  his  own  pen. 


160       POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

This  refers  to  a  preface,  "To  The  Reader,"  signed  by  Mrs. 
Clemm,  that  had  been  inserted  into  the  first  volume, 
"Tales."  In  addition,  this  contained  a  short  biogra 
phy  entitled  "Edgar  A.  Poe,"  written  by  James  Russell 
Lowell.  This  had  been  published  in  "Graham's  Magazine" 
in  1845,  and  was  here  republished  with  slight  variations. 
With  this  was  a  most  appreciative  review  of  Poe  and  his 
work  by  Willis,  under  the  title  "Death  of  Edgar  A.  Poe." 

In  this  edition  of  my  son's  works,  published  for  my  benefit,  it  is  a 
great  pleasure  for  me  to  thank  Mr.  Griswold  and  Mr.  Willis  .  .  . 
for  labors  .  .  .  which  they  performed  without  any  other  recompense 
than  the  happiness  which  rewards  acts  of  duty  and  kindness. 

Neilson  Poe  transmitted  to  Griswold  all  the  books  and 
MSS.  that  he  found  in  the  trunk  that  Edgar  Poe  had  with 
him  at  the  time  of  his  death,  and  these,  together  with 
the  things  taken  from  Mrs.  Clemm,  must  have  consti 
tuted  Poe's  library  as  well  as  his  entire  literary  remains. 
Following  Poe's  death,  Neilson  Poe  wrote  Griswold : 

I  have  opened  his  trunk  and  find  it  to  contain  very  few  manuscripts 
of  value.  The  chief  of  them  is  a  lecture  on  the  poetic  principle  and  some 
paragraphs  prepared,  apparently,  for  some  literary  journal.  There  are, 
however,  a  number  of  books,  his  own  works,  which  are  full  of  correc 
tions  in  his  own  hand.  These  ought,  undoubtedly,  to  be  placed  in  your 
hands. 

Woodberry  in  commenting  on  this  letter  describes  cer 
tain  of  these  books : 

These  volumes  were  the  copies  of  the  Tales  and  Poems,  now  known 
as  the  Lorimer-Graham  copies,  the  copy  of  Eureka,  now  known  as 
Hurst's  copy,  and  possibly  others,  all  afterwards  sold  with  Griswold's 
library. 

Not  one  of  Poe's  books  or  MSS.  was  returned  by  Gris 
wold  to  Mrs.  Clemm.These  he  had  especially  demanded  as  a 
preparation  for  their  proper  publication,  and  they  included 
not  only  all  of  the  books,  many  of  them  specially  annotated 
by  Poe,  but  all  his  notes  and  private  memoranda.  It  has 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      161 

been  asserted  that  Poe,  at  the  time  of  his  death,  had  com 
pleted  a  book  which  was  to  be  entitled  "The  Authors  of 
America,"and  its  publication  was  announced  in  the  "Home 
Journal"  as  of  immediate  issuance.  It  has  never  appeared. 
It  is  possible  that  it  contained  criticisms  which  Griswold 
believed  were  not  creditable  to  Poe :  yet  it  isjiot  fair  to  Gris 
wold  to  make  so  direct  a  charge  of  double  dealing,  for  no 
one  positively  knows  what  was  contained  in  the  papers  and 
books  that  Mrs.  Clemm  gave  in  toGriswold's  possession  by 
special  request.  It  is  also  known  that  Poe  had  collected  ma 
terial  for  a  "Critical  History  of  American  Literature'*; at 
least  he  so  wrote  Lowell.  Nothing  issued  therefrom  except  a 
fragment  called  The  Lighthouse.  Had  not  Annabel  Lee  been 
in  other  hands,  and  The  Bells  already  in  type,  one  cannot 
but  fear  for  their  fate  at  the  critical  hands  of  Griswold. 

Although  ill  and  under  contract  to  other  publishers, 
Griswold  worked  with  feverish  energy  gathering  together 
and  preparing  for  publication  all  of  Poe's  tales  and  poetry 
and  a  few  of  his  reviews.  These  were  published  by  Redfield 
early  in  1850.  Griswold  at  least  succeeded  in  doing  that 
in  which  Poe  had  so  signally  failed.  Although  Poe  had 
sought  many  publishers,  only  occasionally  had  he  found  one 
who  was  willing  to  print  his  work.  Even  on  those  few 
occasions,  he  had  not  been  allowed  the  privilege  of  editing. 
Woodberry  states : 

He  [Griswold]  finally  persuaded  Mr.  Redfield  to  try  the  experi 
ment  of  issuing  two  volumes  first,  which  were  published  and  had  a  fair 
sale — then  the  third  and  finally  the  fourth  were  added  to  complete  the 
works.  The  sale  reached  about  1 500  sets  each  year. 

That  Griswold  was  industrious  as  well  as  success 
ful  is  certain,  for  although  arrangements  financial  and 
otherwise  were  not  completed  with  Mrs.  Clemm  until  late 
in  November,  1849,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  first  volume 
containing  the  "Tales,"  as  well  as  the  second  volume, 
"Poetry  and  Miscellanies,"  was  copyrighted  in  1849. 


162      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

Whether  Redfield  drove  a  hard  bargain,  or  whether 
others  participated  in  the  profits  that  must  have  accrued, 
is  not  known ;  but  it  is  known  that  over  twenty  thousand 
sets  of  these  two  volumes,  with  the  succeeding  two,  were 
sold,  an  enormous  circulation  for  those  days.  Neither  the 
estate  of  Poe  nor  Mrs.  Clemm,  directly  or  indirectly,  re 
ceived  any  of  the  profits. 

Who  did  receive  the  money  earned  by  this  publication? 

Mrs.  Clemm  was  definitely  promised  not  only  that  she 
should  participate  in  the  profits  of  the  sale  of  Poe's  works, 
but  was  made  to  believe  that  these  would  amount  to  a  sum 
so  large  as  to  make  her  independent  of  charity.  Apparently 
she  thought  that  Willis  was  to  be  associated  with  Griswold 
in  this  editorship.  She  wrote  to  "Annie" : 

They  say  I  am  to  have  the  entire  proceeds  so  you  see,  Annie,  I  will 
not  be  entirely  destitute.  .  .  .  [I]  have  been  very  much  engaged 
with  Mr.  Griswold  in  looking  over  his  [Poe's]  papers.  .  .  .  He  must 
have  them  all  until  the  work  is  published.  He  thinks  I  will  realize  from 
two  to  three  thousand  dollars  from  the  sale  of  these  books.  .  .  .  How 
nobly  they  [Griswold  and  Willis]  have  acted!  all  done  gratis,  and  you 
know  to  literary  people  that  is  a  great  deal.  .  .  .  Those  gentlemen 
who  have  so  kindly  undertaken  the  publication  of  his  works  say  that 
I  will  have  a  very  comfortable  income  from  them. 

That  her  only  recompense  was  as  sales  agent  is  shown  by 
the  following  letter  she  wrote  to  Washington  Poe,  dated 
1851,  two  years  after  Poe's  death: 

The  publisher  of  my  poor  Eddie's  works  can  only  allow  me  as 
many  copies  of  the  work  as  I  choose  to  dispose  of  amongst  my  friends ; 
but  a  continued  state  of  ill  health  and  a  delicacy  of  feeling  prevents 
my  availing  myself  of  this  privilege,  except  through  the  kindness  of  a 
few  friends  who  have  disposed  of  a  few  copies  for  me. 

Mrs.  Clemm  lived  an  object  of  chanty  and  she  died  in 
a  pauper's  home. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY        163 

Already  I  have  dwelled  sufficiently  upon  Poe's  literary 
enemies,  and  on  the  fact  that  others  besides  Griswold  en 
tertained  the  sentiments  expressed  in  the  Ludwig  article ; 
and  it  is  not  possible  altogether  to  excuse  Poe  from  giving 
cause.  In  extenuation  it  can  be  said  that  a  study  of  his 
morbid  mental  state  shows  that  he  was  not  at  all  times  to 
be  held  responsible.  While  this  must  have  been  patent  to 
all  who  associated  with  Poe,  to  those  who  did  not'  know 
him,  such  an  explanation  was  worthy  of  slight  consideration. 

On  many  occasions  Poe  was  the  aggressor :  often  to  his 
credit,  for  to  one  who  studies  the  literature  of  that  day 
either  as  originally  published  in  the  many  contemporary 
periodicals,  or  as  selected  and  preserved  in  Duyckinck's 
* 'Cyclopedia  of  American  Literature,"  much  that  Poe 
wrote,  even  if  conceded  to  be  severe,  was  undoubtedly 
true.  In  favorably  criticising  Wilmer's  * 'Quacks  of  Heli 
con,"  Poe  asserted: 

We  repeat  it :  it  is  the  truth  which  he  has  spoken ;  and  who  shall  con 
tradict  us?  He  has  said  unscrupulously  what  every  reasonable  man 
among  us  has  long  known  to  be  'as  true  as  the  Pentateuch' — that,  as  a 
literary  people,  we  are  one  vast  perambulating  humbug.  He  has  as 
serted  that  we  are  clique-ridden ;  and  who  does  not  smile  at  the  obvious 
truism  of  that  assertion?  He  maintains  that  chicanery,  with  us,  is  a 
far  surer  road  than  talent  to  distinction  in  letters.  Who  gainsays  this  ? 
The  corrupt  nature  of  our  literary  criticism  has  become  notorious. 
The  intercourse  between  critic  and  publisher,  as  it  now  universally 
stands,  is  comprised  either  in  the  paying  and  pocketing  of  blackmail, 
as  the  price  of  a  simple  forbearance,  or  in  a  petty  and  contemptible 
bribery,  properly  so  called — a  system  even  more  injurious  than  the 
former  to  the  true  interests  of  the  public,  and  more  degrading  to  the 
buyers  and  sellers  of  good  opinion,  on  account  of  the  more  positive 
service  here  rendered  for  the  consideration  received.  We  laugh  at  the 
denial  of  our  assertions  upon  this  topic :  they  are  infamously  true.  In 
this  charge  of  general  corruption  there  are  undoubtedly  many  noble 
exceptions  to  be  made.  .  .  ,  But  these  cases  are  insufficient  to  have 
much  effect  on  the  popular  mistrust :  a  mistrust  heightened  by  a  late 
exposure  of  the  machinations  of  coteries  in  New  York — coteries  which 


164      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

at  the  bidding  of  leading  booksellers,  manufacture,  as  required  from 
time,  to  time,  a  pseudo-public  opinion. 

Poe  strongly  intimated  that  Griswold  had  accepted 
money  or,  as  he  expressed  it,  a  "quid  pro  quo'  for  admit 
tance  of  certain  writers  into  his  collections,  and  that  the 
amount  of  space  assigned  them  depended  on  the  sum  of 
money  they  paid.  Naturally,  such  statements  intensified 
the  personal  dislike  that  from  their  first  meeting  had 
existed,  into  that  deep-rooted  hatred  the  evidence  of 
which  is  so  manifest  in  Griswold's  memoir.  Although  Poe 
made  these  statements  regarding  Griswold  publicly  and  in 
print  long  before  his  death,  and  on  all  occasions  manifested 
his  contempt,  Griswold  never  openly  resented  it;  on  the 
other  hand,  after  Poe's  death  Griswold  exhibited  solicitude 
for  Mrs.  Clemm  and  a  desire  to  aid  her  in  her  bereavement. 
Otherwise  he  could  not  possibly  have  obtained  permanent 
and  complete  control  of  all  Poe's  literary  possessions,  in 
cluding  even  his  books  and  private  letters. 

The  underlying  reason  that  impelled  Griswold  to 
volunteer  as  editor  of  Poe's  works,  and  to  assume  their 
publication,  cannot  be  positively  stated.  Whether  he  was 
moved  to  this  by  a  spirit  of  forgiveness  for  a  dead  enemy, 
by  compassion  for  the  benighted  and  helpless  mother,  and 
an  honest  admiration  for  the  material  that  required  the 
services  of  a  skillful  compiler;  or  spurred  to  revenge  in 
juries  that  he  had  never  dared  to  resent  while  his  foe 
lived,  and  a  desire  to  protect  his  own  good  name  from 
over-severe  criticism,  can  never  be  known. 

That  Griswold  believed  he  could  in  this  way  associate 
his  name  with  one  who  would  be  regarded  as  our  greatest 
writer  is  a  possible  but  not  a  probable  explanation,  for  he 
was  myopic  when  long  vision  was  necessary,  and  astig 
matic  when  breadth  of  vision  was  required,  and  his  esti 
mates  of  *  'autorial"  merit — if  they  were  honest — were 
characterized  by  a  pronounced  strabismus. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      165 

Yet  there  was  some  compelling  reason.  As  we  can  hardly 
read  our  own  mind,  much  less  that  of  another,  the  answer, 
at  best,  is  a  surmise  and  possibly  would  only  approximate 
the  truth,  even  if  given  by  one  unprejudiced.  I  can  not 
qualify  in  this  class,  for  which  reason  I  doubt  my  own 
interpretation  of  the  facts. 

Whatever  be  the  reason,  the  result,  in  Woodberry's 
opinion,  reflects  much  credit  on  Griswold : 

The  one  distinguishing  tribute  paid  to  Rufus  Wilmot  Griswold, 
one  that  establishes  his  characteristic  excellences,  was  his  selection  by 
Poe  to  be  his  literary  executor  just  before  his  death.  Poe  was  a  good 
judge  of  editorial  capacity,  notwithstanding  a  history  of  personal  rela 
tions  that  would  seem  to  exclude  the  possibility  of  such  a  choice. 

Having  had  experience  with  Poe's  criticisms,  Griswold 
was  willing  to  "edit"  at  least  one  of  these,  and  felt  it  wise 
to  suppress  or  modify  others.  I  cannot  believe,  with  Gill, 
that  the  assumption  of  this  editorship  was  *  prompted  by 
hatred/'  and  that  the  insertion  of  the  memoir  in  order  to 
damn  a  dead  enemy  was  a  deciding  factor ;  possibly,  when 
Griswold  saw  the  opportunity,  he  could  not  resist. 

There  was  a  reason  which  did  deeply  concern  Griswold, 
and  which  might  have  induced  him  to  purchase  "all" 
manuscripts  and  thus  obtain  permanent  control.  Soon  after 
"Poets  and  Poetry  of  America*  *  was  published  Griswold  and 
Poe  discussed  it,  and  Poe  gave  the  following  version  of  the 
conversation : 

I  said  that  I  had  thought  of  reviewing  it  in  full  .  .  .  and  that  I 
knew  no  other  work  in  which  a  notice  would  be  readily  admissible. 
Griswold  said  in  reply :  'You  need  not  trouble  yourself  about  the  pub 
lication  of  the  review,  should  you  decide  on  writing  it,  for  I  will  attend 
to  all  that.  I  will  get  it  in  some  reputable  work,  and  look  to  it  for  the 
usual  pay  in  the  meantime  handing  you  whatever  the  charge  would 
be.'  This  you  see  was  an  ingenious  insinuation  of  a  bribe  to  puff  his 
book.  I  accepted  his  offer  forthwith,  and  wrote  the  review,  handed  it 
to  him,  and  received  from  him  the  compensation;  he  never  daring  to 
look  over  the  manuscript  in  my  presence,  and  taking  it  for  granted  it 


166      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

was  all  right.  But  that  review  has  not  yet  appeared,  and  I  am  doubtful 
if  it  ever  will.  I  wrote  it  precisely  as  I  would  have  written  under  ordi 
nary  circumstances,  and  be  sure  there  was  no  predominance  of  praise. 

One  cannot  be  certain  that  this  review,  as  written,  was 
ever  published.  Apparently  Poe  did  not  make  an  extended 
criticism  at  that  time,  although  there  is  an  article  repro 
duced  in  Poe's  collected  works  under  the  title,  Mr.  Griswold 
and  the  Poets.  While  not  altogether  flattering,  it  does  con 
tain  pleasant  personal  references,  and  occasionally  there  is 
a  tone  of  decided  approval. 

In  this  preface,  which  is  remarkably  well  written  and  strictly  to 
the  purpose,  the  author  thus  evinces  a  just  comprehension  of  the 
nature  and  objects  of  true  poesy,  'He  who  looks  on  Lake  George,  or 
sees  the  sun  rise  on  the  Mackinaw,  or  listens  to  the  grand  music  of  a 
storm,  is  divested,  certainly  for  a  time,  of  a  portion  of  the  alloy  of  his 
nature  .  .  .  The  creation  of  beauty,  the  manifestation  of  the  real  by  the 
ideal,  'in  words  that  move  in  metrical  array'  is  poetry.  The  italics  are 
our  own ;  and  we  quote  the  passage  because  it  embodies  the  sole  true 
definition  of  what  has  been  a  thousand  times  erroneously  defined. 

Neither  this,  nor  other  complimentary  references,  cor 
respond  with  Poe's  description  of  his  review  nor  do  they 
express  Poe's  real  opinion  of  the  work: 

By  the  way,  if  you  have  not  seen  Mr.  Griswold's  'American  Series 
of  the  Curiosities  of  Literature'  then  look  at  it,  for  God's  sake — or  for 
mine.  I  wish  you  to  say  upon  your  word  of  honor,  whether  it  is,  or  is 
not,  per  se,  the  greatest  of  all  the  curiosities  of  Literature,  or  whether 
it  is  as  great  a  curiosity  as  the  compiler  himself. 

Again  Poe  wrote : 

He  is  a  pretty  fellow  to  set  himself  up  for  an  honest  judge,  or  even 
as  a  capable  one.  I  shall  make  war  to  the  knife  against  the  New  Eng 
land  assumption  of  'All  the  decency  and  all  the  talent'  which  has  been 
so  disgustingly  manifested  by  the  Rev.  Rufus  Griswold's  'Poets  and 
Poetry  of  America.* 

Poe,  in  his  lecture  on  "The  Poets  and  Poetry  of  Amer 
ica,"  severely  criticized  Griswold's  volume.  However,  the 
crowning  offense  was  his  review  in  the  *  'Saturday  Museum' ' 
of  the  third  edition  of  Griswold's  "Poets." 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY       167 

Poe  began  this  review  with  a  discussion  of  Griswold's 
capacity  for  such  work.  He  questioned  Griswold's  preten 
sion  to  having  established  either  a  literary  or  a  critical 
reputation  that  would  give  him  the  right  to  pass  on  the 
qualifications  and  the  literary  performances  of  his  contem 
poraries  whom  he  proposed  to  discuss.  He  asks : 

Did  the  'Jonathan'  or  the  'Notion'  attain  any  higher  position 
than  before,  during  Mr.  G.'s  connection  with  them ;  or  have  the  'Post' 
or  'Graham's'  improved  under  his  supervision?  The  'Standard'  we 
leave  out  of  the  question  as  it  expired  under  his  management.  Cer 
tainly  not  the  former ;  and  the  brilliant  career  of  'Graham's  Magazine' 
under  Mr.  Poe's  care,  and  its  subsequent  trashy  literary  character 
since  his  retirement,  is  a  sufficient  response.  ...  As  a  critic  his  judg 
ment  is  worthless,  for  a  critic  should  possess  sufficient  independence 
and  honesty  to  mete  out  justice  to  all  men,  without  fear,  favor  or  par 
tiality.  .  .  .  Are  Dana  and  Hoffman  the  superiors  of  N.  P.  Willis? 
...  Is  Bryant  a  better  poet  than  Longfellow?  Certainly  not,  for  in 
Longfellow's  pages  the  spirit  of  poetry — ideality — walks  abroad, 
while  Bryant's  sole  merit  is  tolerable  versification  and  fine  marches  of 
description.  Longfellow  is  undoubtedly  the  best  poet  in  America. 

After  discussing  versification  and  the  art  of  poetry,  and 
after  specifying  certain  necessary  standards  that  must 
guide  a  poet  in  his  selection  and  treatment  of  a  subject,  il 
lustrating  it  with  various  happy  selections,  Poe  took 
up  and  critically  dissected  Griswold's  poem,  The  Sunset 
Storm.  He  severely  criticized  its  underlying  idea,  its  ver 
sification  and  its  grammatical  construction,  comparing 
it,  to  its  very  great  disadvantage,  with  the  Charmed 
Sleeper. 

Did  any  one  ever  read  such  nonsense?  We  never  did,  and,  shall  here 
after  eschew  everything  that  bears  the  name  of  Rufus  Wilmot  Gris- 
wold,  as  strongly  as  the  Moslemite  the  forbidden  wine,  or  the  Jew  the 
'unmentionable  flesh.'  .  .  .  We  shall  quote  some  few  passages  from 
one  of  his  latest  reviews,  and  that  on  the  author  of  the  'Charmed 
Sleeper' — Alfred  Tennyson,  whose  genius  and  originality  have  ex 
cited  the  imitative  faculties  of  the  principal  poets  of  America.  'His 
chief  characteristics  pertaining  to  style,  they  will  not  long  attract 


168      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

regard.'  Here  we  have  a  gross  grammatical  error — two  nominatives  to 
one  verb,  'characteristics'  and  'they'  to  'will.'  'He  tricks  out  common 
thoughts  in  dresses  so  unique  it  is  not  always  easy  to  identify  them.' 
(Is  this  not  originality  ?  Yet  in  the  next  portion  of  the  sentence  we  hear 
this  sapient  critic  say)  'but  we  have  not  seen  in  his  works  proofs  of  an 
original  mind/  (0  temporal  0  mores!  This  Griswold  says  of  Tennyson!) 
Again,  'as  a  versifier,  Holmes  is  equal  to  Tennyson,  and  with  the  same 
patient  effort  would  in  every  way  surpass  him.  We  desire  none  of  his 
companionship.'  (Don't  you  hope  you  may  get  it?)  'Him  who  stole  at 
first  hand  from  Keats.'  Well,  if  this  is  not  the  height  of  assurance  we  do 
not  know  what  is,  coming  as  it  does  from  one  of  the  most  clumsy  of 
literary  thieves,  and  who  in  his  wildest  aspirations,  never  even 
dreamed  of  an  original  thought.  A  man  who  does  not  understand  the 
first  principles  of  versification,  the  author  of  the  'Sunset  Storm,'  and 
thus  to  speak  of  Tennyson,  the  author  of  the  'Sleeping  Beauty'  we 
have  just  quoted !  We  can  only  say  to  Mr.  Griswold,  'Jove  protect  us 
from  his  reviewing  and  the  public  from  what  he  deems  exquisite.  .  .' 
Let  us  proceed.  Ah!  what  have  we  here?  'The  creation  of  beauty,  the 
manifestation  of  the  real  by  the  ideal,  in  words  that  move  in  metrical 
array,  is  poetry/'  Now  what  is  this  but  a  direct  amplification  of  our 
poet  of  the  definition  of  poetry — 'the  rhythmical  creation  of  beauty  — 
which  appeared  in  Mr.  Poe's  critique  on  Professor  Longfellow's  bal 
lads,  from  which  we  know,  and  he  knows,  he  stole  it. 

Compare  this  with  Mr.  Griswold  and  the  Poets  as  pub 
lished  in  "The  Literati,'*  and  with  the  quotation  already 
given  that  refers  to  this  definition  (p.  166). 

Well,  we  have  looked  over  the  book,  and  we  find  it  just  such  a 
result  as  might  be  anticipated.  The  biographies  are  miserably  written, 
and  as  to  the  criticisms  on  style,  they  certainly  are  not  critiques 
raisonnes,  and  that  simply  because  reasoning  and  thinking  are  entirely 
out  of  Mr.  G.'s  sphere.  As  to  the  different  degrees  of  merit  allotted  to 
each  author,  we  cannot  help  thinking  it  possible,  but  we  will  not  say 
it,  that  sub  rosa  arrangements  were  made,  and  a  proportionable  quan 
tity  of  fame  allotted,  in  consideration  of  the  quid  pro  quo  received. 
Besides  the  whole  work  is  not  even  a  specimen  of  the  'Poets  and 
Poetry  of  America' ;  and  in  giving  it  our  unqualified  condemnation,  we 
only  cite  the  opinion  of  all,  even  to  the  poets  who  have  been  so  unfor 
tunate  as  to  figure  in  its  pages. 

So  Poe  continues,  excoriating  and  vitriolic  in  his  denun- 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      169 

ciations.  He  finishes  his  review  with  the  following  remark 
able  passage : 

Had  Mr.  Griswold  the  genius  of  Shakespeare,  the  powers  of  a 
Milton,  or  the  critical  learning  of  a  Macaulay,  he  could  not  stem  the 
torrent  of  animadversion  this  book  has  raised;  but  must  be  over 
whelmed  by  the  tide  of  public  disapprobation  which  has  set  in  so 
strongly  upon  him ;  but  as  he  has  neither  the  one  nor  the  other,  what 
will  be  his  fate?  Forgotten,  save  only  by  those  whom  he  has  injured 
and  insulted,  he  will  sink  into  oblivion,  without  leaving  a  landmark  to 
tell  he  once  existed ;  or  if  he  is  spoken  of  hereafter  he  will  be  quoted  as 
the  unfaithful  servant  who  abused  his  trust. 

The  italics  are  Poe's.  Could  words  more  prophetic  have 
been  written? 

This  denunciatory  criticism,  which  bears  evidence  of 
sincerity  with  a  full  comprehension  of  Griswold's  failure 
as  a  critic,  makes  it  impossible  to  believe  that  Poe  did  re 
quest  Griswold  to  become  his  literary  executor. 

Griswold  based  his  claim  to  appointment  on  the  au 
thority  of  "the  family  of  S.  D.  Lewis,  Esq./'  declaring 
that  he  had  heard  from  them  that  such  was  Poe's  request. 

As  Poe  was  leaving  New  York  on  his  last  journey,  in 
bidding  farewell  to  Mrs.  Lewis  at  whose  house  he  had 
spent  the  night,  she  reports  that  he  said : 

You  truly  understand  and  appreciate  me — I  have  a  presentiment 
that  I  shall  never  see  you  again.  I  must  leave  today  for  Richmond.  If 
I  never  return,  write  my  life.  You  can  and  will  do  me  justice. 

Woodberry,  who  has  shown  remarkable  industry  in 
gathering  up  all  that  concerns  this  controversy,  fails  to 
mention  the  "Saturday  Museum,"  criticism  of  Griswold's 
"Poets  of  America,"  which  necessarily  did  accentuate 
Griswold's  hostility  to  Poe.  Woodberry,  remarking  on 
Griswold's  selection  by  Poe,  does  express  surprise,  stating 
that  there  was  "a  history  of  personal  relations  that  would 
seem  to  exclude  the  possibility  of  such  a  choice,"  yet  he 
does  not  question  the  truth  of  Griswold's  assertion. 


170      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

Griswold  in  the  preface  to  his  "Memoir"  denies  enmity: 

Both  these  writers — John  Neal  following  the  author  of  the  letter 
signed  'George  R.  Graham' — not  only  assume  what  I  have  shown  to 
be  false  (that  the  remarks  on  Poe's  character  were  written  by  me  as 
his  executor),  but  that  there  was  a  long,  intense,  and  implacable 
enmity  betwixt  Poe  and  myself,  which  disqualified  me  for  the  office  of 
his  biographer.  This  scarcely  needs  an  answer  after  the  poet's  dying 
request  that  I  should  be  his  editor ;  but  the  manner  in  which  it  has  been 
urged,  will,  I  trust,  be  a  sufficient  excuse  for  the  following  demonstra 
tion  of  its  absurdity. 

Griswold  quotes  various  letters,  all  referring  to  Poe's 
literary  work,  which  he  had  proposed  to  include  in  his 
"Poets  and  Poetry  of  America,"  but  the  dates  do  not  show 
that  these  were  written  after  the  "Museum"  article,  and 
Gill  says  that  they  were  "emended." 

Woodberry  says : 

Of  these  letters  two  originals  only  were  among  the  Griswold  Mss. 
and  both  varied  materially  from  the  printed  text ;  but  however  garbled 
the  letters,  the  relations  of  the  two  men  are  plain.  .  .  .  These  business 
communications  contain  expressions  of  regard  for  Griswold's  work 
and  apologetic  expressions  for  censure,  which  may  or  may  not  be 
garbled  or  interpolated. 

Griswold  made  no  attempt  to  conceal  his  real  attitude 
both  to  the  memory  of  Poe  and  to  Mrs.  Clemm.  In  a  letter 
written  to  Mrs.  Whitman  soon  after  Poe's  death,  Griswold 
does  not  hesitate  to  express  himself  fully : 

I  wrote,  as  you  suppose,  the  notice  of  Poe  in  The  Tribune',  but 
very  hastily.  /  was  not  his  friend,  nor  was  he  mine  [italics  are  Gris 
wold's]  as  I  remember  to  have  told  you.  I  undertook  to  edit  his  writ 
ings  to  oblige  Mrs.  Clemm.  ...  I  saw  very  little  of  Poe  in  his  last 
years.  ...  I  cannot  refrain  from  begging  you  to  be  very  careful  what 
you  say  or  write  to  Mrs.  Clemm,  who  is  not  your  friend,  nor  anybody's 
friend,  and  who  has  no  element  of  goodness  or  kindness  in  her  nature, 
but  whose  heart  and  understanding  are  full  of  malice  and  wickedness. 

It  was  "to  oblige  Mrs.  Clemm"  that  Griswold  undertook 
the  editorship,  when,  by  so  doing,  he  had  "to  solicit  the 
indulgence  of  my  publishers,  who  had  many  thousand 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      171 

dollars  invested  in  an  unfinished  work  under  my  direc 
tion/'  It  is  noticeable  that  Woodberry  does  not  refer  to 
the  personal  hostility  existing  at  that  time ;  neither  does  he 
more  than  mention  the  "Museum"  article,  nor  does  he 
publish  the  letter  that  Griswold  wrote  Mrs.  Whitman, 
though  all  other  recent  biographers  have  quoted  it. 

It  must  have  been  some  powerful  reason  that  induced 
Griswold  to  neglect  his  own  work  "involving  thousands 
of  dollars,"  with  whose  safe  keeping  he  was  intrusted, 
and  to  undertake  the  work  of  editing  the  writings  of  an 
avowed  enemy  who  had  so  bitterly  excoriated  him.  It  was 
not  for  gain  and  it  was  not  for  love;  nor  was  it  "an  act  of 
duty  and  kindness."  It  did  result  in  Griswold's  "editing" 
some  of  Poe's  criticisms,  even  after  they  had  been  pub 
lished  ;  in  the  emending  of  others,  and  in  the  suppression  of 
his  lecture  on  the  "Poets  and  Poetry  of  America,"  as  well 
as  in  the  omission  of  the  article  which  had  appeared  in  the 
"Saturday  Museum"  from  which  I  have  quoted. 

After  reading  that  closing  sentence,  I  cannot  believe 
Poe  "had  long  been  in  the  habit  of  expressing  a  desire  in 
the  event  of  his  death  that  I  should  be  his  editor."  To 
avoid  being  pilloried  for  future  generations,  a  less  vain 
and  self-seeking  author  would  have  desired  the  control  and 
ownership  of  such  a  publication. 

It  is  noticeable  that  this  review  has  never  been  pub 
lished  in  full  even  by  the  later  editors  of  Poe's  collected 
works  and  I  have  been  able  to  find  it  only  in  the  Gill 
appendix. 

Griswold's  effort  would  have  met  with  success  had  he 
been  able,  when  so  fair  an  opportunity  presented  itself, 
to  refrain  from  besmirching  the  memory  of  one  of  whom 
he  should  have  been  more  considerate ;  at  least  he  might 
have  been  forgotten,  and  not  have  been  placed  in  the 
position  of  one  who,  "if  he  is  spoken  of  hereafter,  will  be 
quoted  as  the  unfaithful  servant  who  abused  his  trust." 


172      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

Beyond  question,  Poe's  criticism  warped  the  judgment 
of  Griswold.  He  was  a  Reverend,  and  possibly  that  kind  of 
a  Christian  who  will  receive  an  insult  without  openly 
resenting  it,  and  will  "turn  the  other  cheek"  when 
assaulted.  A  man  who  thus  accepts  an  insult  is  to  be  feared 
more  than  one  who  bravely  stands  forth,  and  hits  back 
with  all  the  strength  that  is  in  him.  A  gentle  answer  never 
turned  away  honest  wrath  and  righteous  indignation.  I 
am  as  fearful  of  such  association  as  I  was  when,  sleeping  in 
a  cave  of  the  Lava  Beds,  I  found  that  a  rattlesnake  was 
warming  itself  in  my  blankets. 

Christian  though  Griswold  was,  and  meek  and  lowly  as 
he  may  have  appeared,  he  was  not  reputed  to  have  been 
forbearing  or  honest.  Ingram  states  that  he  was  discharged 
from  Graham's  for  "dishonesty,"  and  that  Thackeray 
"detected  him  in  deliberate  lying/' 

Woodberry  in  his  "Appendix"  quotes  Leland,  an  inti 
mate  friend  and  admirer  of  Griswold,  who  wrote  of  him : 

To  the  end  of  his  life  I  was  always  with  him  a  privileged  character 
and  could  take,  if  I  chose,  the  most  extraordinary  liberties,  though  he 
was  one  of  the  most  irritable  and  vindictive  men  I  ever  met  if  he 
fancied  he  was  in  any  way  too  familiarly  treated. 

Another  probable  reference  to  Griswold  is  found  in  the 
"Six-penny  Magazine,"  quoted  by  Woodberry.  It  referred 
to  an  "excursion  to  Fordham  to  visit  Poe." 

Some  sixteen  years  ago,  I  went  on  a  little  excursion  with  two 
others — one  a  reviewer,  since  dead,  and  the  other  a  person  who  wrote 
laudatory  notices  of  books,  and  borrowed  money  or  favours  from  their 
flattered  authors  afterwards.  He  was  called  unscrupulous  by  some, 
but  he  probably  considered  his  method  a  delicate  way  of  conferring 
favour  upon  an  author  or  of  doing  him  justice  without  the  disagree 
able  conditions  of  bargain  and  sale.  It  is  certain  that  he  lived  better 
and  held  his  head  higher  than  many  who  did  more  and  better  work. 

Yet,  in  judging  the  man,  we  must  understand  the  times. 
It  was  not  a  period  characterized  by  literary  honesty,  and 
Poe's  "quid  pro  quo"  applied  to  Griswold,  could  have  with 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      173 

equal  truth  described  the  literary  morals  of  many  others. 
It  is  known  that  Greeley  used  Griswold  for  "unholy"  pur 
poses.  "Get  a  right  notice  in  the  'Ledger'  if  you  can.  But 
pay  for  it  rather  than  not  get  a  good  one."  Another  wrote : 
"If  you  can  get  the  accompanying  notices  published,  one 
in  the  'North  American'  and  the  other  in  the  'Evening  Jour 
nal'  without  betraying  it,  do  so.  I  shall  cheerfully  recip 
rocate  the  favor."  Woodberry  adds: 

Greeley's  characterizations  are  the  shrewdest  in  the  volume 
[referring  to  the  papers  Woodberry  had  been  employed  to  edit]  often 
only  hints,  but  effective,  and  to  Griswold  himself  he  sometimes  uses  a 
tell-tale  frankness :  'Now  write  me  a  few  racy,  spicy — not  personal,  far 
less  malignant'  [evidently  Greeley  knew  his  capacity  and  recognized 
his  ability]  'depicting  society  and  life  in  Philadelphia/  .  .  .  Again, 
The  only  principle  I  ever  found  you  tenacious  of  is  that  of  having 
your  pay  at  least  as  fast  as  you  can  earn  it/  There  are  several  other 
obiter  dicta  from  different  persons  with  regard  to  Griswold,  who  cer 
tainly  had  unamiable  traits  and  grave  defects. 

After  all,  it  is  possible  that,  in  the  beginning,  Griswold 
was  only  the  good  dog,  the  spaniel  that  fetched  and  carried 
for  Greeley.  It  is  known  that  Greeley  bore  no  love  for  Poe 
and  that,  because  Poe  borrowed  a  small  sum  of  money  and 
had  not  been  able  to  return  it,  Greeley  did  not  hesitate  to 
brand  him  publicly.  Poe  bitterly  protested: 

In  the  printed  matter,  I  have  underscored  two  passages.  As  re 
gards  the  first : — it  alone  would  have  sufficed  to  assure  me  that  you  did 
not  write  this  article.  I  owe  you  money — I  have  been  ill,  unfortunate, 
no  doubt  weak,  and  yet  am  not  able  to  refund  the  money — but  on  this 
ground  you,  Mr.  Greeley,  could  never  have  accused  me  of  being  habit 
ually  unscrupulous  in  the  fulfillment  of  my  pecuniary  obligations.  The 
charge  is  horribly  false — I  have  a  hundred  times  left  myself  destitute  of 
bread,  for  myself  and  family,  that  I  might  discharge  my  debts.  .  .  . 
The  second  passage  embodies  a  falsehood — and  therefore  you  did  not 
write  it.  I  did  not  'throw  away  the  quill/  I  arose  from  a  sick-bed 
(although  scarcely  able  to  stand  or  see)  and  wrote. 

It  was  Greeley  who,  according  to  his  own  report,  ordered 
Griswold  to  write  the  Ludwig  article,  and  while  he  does 


174      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

not  specify  the  exact  instructions  that  he  gave,  it  is  entirely 
possible,  judging  from  his  method  of  personal  supervision 
as  detailed  by  Woodberry,  that  he  fully  indicated  the 
character  of  the  obituary  he  desired  for  publication.  It  is 
certain  that  he  did  not  instruct  Griswold  to  write  one  "not 
personal — far  less  malignant" : 

We  learned  by  telegraph  the  fact  of  Poe's  death  at  Baltimore,  in 
the  afternoon  following  its  occurrence  and  soon  after,  meeting  Dr. 
Griswold,  and  knowing  his  acquaintance  with  Poe,  asked  him  to  pre 
pare  some  account  of  the  deceased  for  the  next  morning's  paper.  He 
immediately  and  hastily  wrote  in  our  presence  his  two  columns  or  more. 

This  article,  it  is  not  unfair  to  infer,  may  have  been  the 
joint  production  of  Greeley  and  Griswold  and  for  some  of 
its  passages  they  must  be  held  jointly  responsible.  One 
cannot  come  to  know  the  facts  as  they  relate  both  to  the 
genesis  of  this  obituary  and  to  its  later  elaboration  into  a 
memoir  without  having  for  its  authors  a  feeling  strongly 
akin  to  disgust.  True  or  false  the  assertions  made  therein 
should  not  have  been  inserted  into  a  memoir  prefacing 
Poe's  works, 

.  .  .  and  which  we  think  with  Sir  Thomas  Browne  should  never  be 
recorded, — being  Verities  whose  truth  we  fear  and  heartily  wish  there 
was  no  truth  therein  .  .  .  whose  relations  honest  minds  deprecate.' 

Although  Griswold  named  Mrs.  Lewis  as  his  authority 
to  act  as  Poe's  editor,  and  she  has  been  exploited  as  one  of 
the  friends  who  gave  Poe  aid  and  comfort  in  his  time  of 
trouble,  I  strongly  suspect  that  her  interest  was  a  pose. 
There  is  reason  to  believe  that  her  friendship  was  due  to 
Poe's  literary  standing,  the  favors  she  had  received 
from  him  and  the  assistance  that  she  expected  in  further 
ing  her  literary  pretensions,  rather  than  to  any  genuine 
feeling. 

There  are  certain  letters  on  record  that  lead  me  to  this 
conclusion.  The  first  was  written  by  Poe  to  Griswold  and 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      175 

is  a  plea  for  a  more  lenient,  or  a  more  liberal,  judgment  of 
Mrs.  Lewis,  in  his  "Female  Poets  of  America." 

Since  I  have  more  critically  examined  your  'Female  Poets,'  it  oc 
curs  to  me  that  you  have  not  quite  done  justice  to  our  common  friend, 
Mrs.  Lewis ;  and  if  you  would  oblige  me  so  far  as  to  substitute,  for  your 
no  doubt  hurried  notice,  a  somewhat  longer  one  prepared  by  myself,  I 
would  reciprocate  the  favor  when,  where,  and  as  you  please. 

The  italicised  as  makes  it  evident  that  Poe  was  prepared 
to  pay  in  whatever  coin  Griswold  might  demand.  Poe  had 
no  money,  but  he  did  have  a  remarkably  vigorous  pen. 
Those  were  queer  times  and  we  cannot  always  believe 
everything  we  read:  in  the  case  of  Poe  the  remarkable 
thing  was  that  sooner  or  later  his  critical  judgment  asserted 
itself,  and  he  made  plain  his  genuine  estimate.  Both  Poe 
and  Griswold  were  worth  cultivating  by  any  lady  with 
literary  aspirations. 

It  is  on  record  that  Poe  wrote  Thomas: 

You  would  oblige  me  very  especially  if  you  would  squeeze  in  what 
follows,  editorially.  The  lady  (Mrs.  Lewis)  spoken  of,  is  a  most  par 
ticular  friend  of  mine,  and  deserves  all  I  have  said  of  her.  I  will  recip 
rocate  the  favor  I  ask,  whenever  you  say  the  word  and  show  me  how. 

It  has  been  said  that  it  was  of  this  lady's  poems  that 
Poe,  when  asked  to  review  them,  "simply  remarked  that  if 
he  reviewed  her  rubbish  it  would  kill  him." 

This,  like  many  other  alleged  side-remarks  attributed  to 
Poe,  is  apocryphal.  Harrison  quotes  Poe  as  writing: 

Mrs.  Lewis  is,  perhaps,  the  best  educated,  if  not  the  most  accom 
plished  of  American  authoresses.  .  .  .  She  is  not  only  cultivated  as 
respects  the  usual  ornaments  of  her  sex,  but  excels  as  a  modern  lin 
guist,  and  very  especially  as  a  classical  scholar;  while  her  scientific 
acquisitions  are  of  no  common  order. 

After  Poe's  death  and  the  appearance  of  the  Ludwig 
article  with  the  "Memoir"  containing  a  letter  Poe  had 
written  to  Griswold  in  which  this  lady's  name  was  men- 


176      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

tioned — not  a  nice  thing  for  Griswold  to  have  done — Mrs. 
Lewis  wrote  Griswold : 

Nothing  has  ever  given  me  so  much  insight  into  Mr.  Poe's  real 
character  as  his  letters  to  you,  which  are  published  in  this  third  volume. 
They  will  not  fail  to  convince  the  public  of  the  injustice  of  Graham 
and  Meal's  articles.  I  was  astonished  at  the  part  of  P.'s  Note,  where  he 
says — 'But  I  have  promised  Mrs.  L.  this.1  I  will  explain.  Mrs.  Qlemm] 
said  to  me  on  one  of  her  visits,  'Dr.  G[riswold]  has  been  at  Fordham. 
He  came  to  see  Eddie  about  you.  Something  about  the  new  edition  of 
"The  Female  Poets."  But  you  are  not  to  know  anything  about  it/ 
Mr.  P.  never  mentioned  the  subject  to  me,  or  I  to  him.  He  only  sent 
to  me  for  my  latest  poems,  saying  that  you  were  going  to  increase  or 
rewrite  the  Sketch  for  a  new  edition  of  The  Female  Poets/ 

Such  a  return  for  such  a  kindly  meant  act  of  Poe  by  such 
a  woman!  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  she  so  placated  Griswold 
that  he  did  amplify  her  "Sketch,"  even  though  she  comes 
down  to  us  not  because  she  appeared  among  the  "Female 
Poets"  but  because  she  has  been  included  among  Poe's 
friends  and  has  been  alluded  to  as  his  benefactress.  This 
letter  has  not  been  commented  on  by  any  of  Poe's  bio 
graphers,  although  Woodbury  refers  to  it  in  his  "Notes". 

Even  though  there  were  many  of  Poe's  old  friends  and 
former  associates  loyal  to  his  memory  who  on  num 
erous  occasions  rallied  to  his  defense,  their  kind  recol 
lections  and  assertions  of  his  good  qualities  availed  little. 
Their  voices  were  drowned  by  the  vehemence  of  Gris- 
wold's  denunciations.  So  forgotten  are  these  statements, 
and  so  scattered  are  they  in  the  pages  of  obsolete  maga 
zines,  that  I  will  partly  quote  a  few  of  them. 

In  a  letter  to  Willis,  written  after  Poe's  death,  in  answer 
to  the  abuse  Griswold  had  heaped  upon  Poe  in  his  memoir, 
Graham  wrote: 

You  have  spoken  with  so  much  truth  and  delicacy  of  the  deceased, 
and,  with  the  magical  touch  of  genius,  have  called  so  warmly  up  be 
fore  me  the  memory  of  our  lost  friend  as  you  and  I  both  seemed  to 
have  known  him,  that  I  feel  warranted  in  addressing  to  you  the  few 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      177 

plain  words  I  have  to  say  in  defense  of  his  character  as  set  down  by 
Mr.  Griswold. 

Although  the  article,  it  seems,  appeared  in  the  'New  York  Tri 
bune/  it  met  my  eye  for  the  first  time  in  the  volume  before  me.  I  now 
purpose  to  take  exception  to  it  in  the  most  public  manner.  I  knew 
Mr.  Poe  well,  far  better  than  Mr.  Griswold ;  and  by  the  memory  of  old 
times,  when  he  was  editor  of  'Graham's,'  I  pronounce  this  exceedingly 
ill-timed  and  unappreciative  estimate  of  the  character  of  our  lost 
friend,  unfair  and  untrue.  It  is  Mr.  Poe  as  seen  by  the  writer  while 
laboring  under  a  fit  of  the  nightmare,  but  so  dark  a  picture  has  no  re 
semblance  to  the  living  man.  Accompanying  these  beautiful  volumes 
it  is  an  immortal  infamy,  the  death's  head  over  the  entrance  to  the 
garden  of  beauty,  a  horror  that  clings  to  the  brow  of  morning,  whis 
pering  of  murder.  It  haunts  the  memory  through  every  page  of  his 
writings,  leaving  upon  the  heart  a  sensation  of  gloom,  a  feeling  almost 
of  terror.  The  only  relief  we  feel  is  in  knowing  that  it  is  not  true,  that 
it  is  a  fancy  sketch  of  a  perverted,  jaundiced  vision.  The  man  who 
could  deliberately  say  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  in  a  notice  of  his  life  and 
writings  prefacing  volumes  which  were  to  become  a  priceless  souvenir 
to  all  who  loved  him,  that  his  death  might  startle  many,  'but  that  few 
would  be  grieved  by  it,'  and  blast  the  whole  reputation  of  the  man  by 
such  a  paragraph  as  follows,  is  a  judge  dishonored.  He  is  not  Mr.  Poe's 
peer,  and  I  challenge  him  before  the  country  even  as  a  juror  in  the 
case. 

In  referring  to  Griswold's  statement  that  "you  could  not 
contradict  him,  but  you  raised  his  quick  choler:  you  could  not 
speak  of  wealth  but  his  cheek  paled  with  gnawing  envy," 
Graham,  for  Poe's  friends,  answered : 

This  is  dastardly,  and,  what  is  worse,  it  is  false.  It  is  very  adroitly 
done,  with  phrases  very  well  turned,  and  with  gleams  of  truth  shining 
out  from  a  setting  so  dusky,  as  to  look  devilish.  Mr.  Griswold  does  not 
feel  the  worth  of  the  man  he  has  undervalued;  he  had  no  sympathy  in 
common  with  him,  and  has  allowed  old  prejudices  and  old  enmities  to 
steal,  insensibly  perhaps,  into  the  coloring  of  his  picture.  They  were 
for  years  totally  uncongenial,  if  not  enemies,  and  during  that  period 
Mr.  Poe,  in  a  scathing  lecture  upon  the  "Poets  of  America,"  gave 
Mr.  Griswold  some  raps  over  the  knuckles  of  force  sufficient  to  be  re 
membered.  He  had,  too,  in  the  exercise  of  his  functions  as  a  critic,  put 
to  death  summarily  the  literary  reputation  of  some  of  Mr.  Griswold's 


178      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

best  friends ;  and  their  ghosts  cried  in  vain  for  him  to  avenge  them  dur 
ing  Poe's  life-time,  and  it  almost  seems  as  if  the  present  hacking  at  the 
cold  remains  of  him  who  struck  them  down,  is  a  sort  of  compensation 
for  duty  long  delayed,  for  reprisal  long  desired,  but  deferred.  But 
without  this,  the  opportunities  afforded  Mr.  Griswold  to  estimate  the 
character  of  Poe  occurred,  in  the  main,  after  his  stability  had  been 
wrecked,  his  whole  nature  in  a  degree  changed  and  with  all  his  prej 
udices  aroused  and  active.  Nor  do  I  consider  Mr.  Griswold  competent, 
with  all  the  opportunities  he  may  have  cultivated  or  acquired,  to  act  as 
his  judge,  to  dissect  that  subtle  and  singularly  fine  intellect,  to  probe 
the  motives  and  weigh  the  actions  of  that  proud  heart.  .  .  .  Among 
the  true  friends  of  Poe  in  this  city — and  he  had  some  such  here — there 
are  those,  I  am  sure,  that  he  did  not  class  among  villains;  nor  do  they 
feel  easy  when  they  see  their  old  friend  dressed  out,  in  his  grave,  in  the 
habiliments  of  a  scoundrel.  There  is  something  to  them,  in  this  mode 
of  procedure  on  the  part  of  the  literary  executor  that  does  not  chime  in 
with  their  notion  'of  the  true  point  of  honor/ 

This  article  is  too  long  to  quote  in  its  entirety.  It  goes 
into  business  details  proving  that  in  all  Poe's  dealings  with 
Graham  he  was  punctiliously  honorable,  and  it  defends 
the  moral  character  of  Poe,  disproving  many  of  Griswold's 
charges.  It  contains  so  many  details  elsewhere  discussed 
that  I  quote  only  the  conclusion : 

They  had  all  of  them  looked  upon  our  departed  friend  as  singu 
larly  indifferent  to  wealth  for  its  own  sake,  but  as  very  positive  in  his 
opinions  that  the  scale  of  social  merit  was  not  of  the  highest;  that 
mind,  somehow,  was  apt  to  be  left  out  of  the  estimate  altogether ;  and, 
partaking  somewhat  of  his  free  way  of  thinking,  his  friends  are 
startled  to  find  they  have  entertained  very  unamiable  convictions.  As 
to  his  'quick-choler'  when  he  was  contradicted,  it  depended  a  good 
deal  on  the  party  denying,  as  well  as  upon  the  subject  discussed.  He 
was  quick,  it  is  true,  to  perceive  mere  quacks  in  literature,  and  some 
what  apt  to  be  hasty,  when  pestered  by  them ;  but,  upon  most  other 
questions  his  natural  amiability  was  not  easily  disturbed.  .  .  .  His 
'astonishing  natural  advantages'  had  been  very  assiduously  cultivated ; 
his  'daring  spirit'  was  the  anointed  genius;  his  self-confidence  the 
proud  conviction  of  both;  and  it  was  with  something  of  a  lofty  scorn 
that  he  attacked,  as  well  as  repelled,  the  crammed  scholar  of  an  hour, 
who  attempted  to  palm  upon  him  the  ill-digested  learning.  Literature 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      179 

with  him  was  religion;  and  he,  its  high-priest,  with  a  whip  of  scor 
pions,  scourged  the  moneychangers  from  the  temple.  In  all  else,  he  had 
the  docility  and  kind-heartedness  of  a  child.  No  man  was  more  quickly 
touched  by  a  kindness,  none  more  prompt  to  return  for  an  injury.  For 
three  or  four  years  I  knew  him  intimately,  and  for  eighteen  months 
saw  him  almost  daily,  much  of  the  time  writing  or  conversing  at  the 
same  desk,  knowing  all  his  hopes,  his  fears,  and  little  annoyances  of 
life,  as  well  as  his  high-hearted  struggle  with  adverse  fate;  yet  he  was 
always  the  same  polished  gentleman,  the  quiet,  unobtrusive,  thought 
ful  scholar,  the  devoted  husband,  frugal  in  his  personal  expenses, 
punctual  and  unwearied  in  his  industry,  and  the  soul  of  honor  in  all  his 
transactions.  This,  of  course,  was  in  his  better  days,  and  by  them  we 
judge  the  man.  But  even  after  his  habits  had  changed,  there  was  no 
literary  man  to  whom  I  would  more  readily  advance  money  for  labor 
to  be  done.  .  .  .  His  pen  was  regulated  by  the  highest  sense  of  duty. 
By  a  keen  analysis  he  separated  and  studied  each  piece  which  the 
skillful  mechanist  had  put  together.  No  part,  however  insignificant,  or 
apparently  unimportant,  escaped  the  rigid  and  patient  scrutiny  of  his 
sagacious  mind. 

The  unfitted  joint  proved  the  bungler — the  slightest  blemish  was  a 
palpable  fraud.  He  was  the  scrutinizing  lapidary  who  detected  and  ex 
posed  the  slightest  flaw  in  diamonds.  The  gem  of  first  water  shone  the 
brighter  for  the  truthful  setting  of  his  calm  praise.  He  had  the  finest 
touch  of  soul  for  beauty — a  delicate  and  hearty  appreciation  of  worth. 
If  his  praise  appeared  tardy,  it  was  of  priceless  value  when  given.  It 
was  true  as  well  as  sincere-  It  was  the  stroke  of  honor  that  at  once 
knighted  the  receiver.  It  was  in  the  world  of  mind  that  he  was  king; 
and,  with  fierce  audacity,  he  felt  and  proclaimed  himself  autocrat.  As 
critic  he  was  despotic,  supreme.  Yet  no  man  with  more  readiness 
would  soften  a  harsh  expression  at  the  request  of  a  friend,  or  if  he  him 
self  felt  that  he  had  infused  too  great  a  degree  of  bitterness  into  his 
article,  none  would  more  readily  soften  it  down,  after  it  was  in  type — 
though  still  maintaining  the  justness  of  his  critical  views.  I  do  not  be 
lieve  that  he  wrote  to  give  pain;  but  in  combating  what  he  conceived 
to  be  error,  he  used  the  strongest  word  that  presented  itself,  even  in 
conversation.  He  labored  not  so  much  to  reform  as  to  exterminate 
error,  and  thought  the  shortest  process  was  to  pull  it  up  by  the  roots 

Though  this  open  letter  was  published  in  "Graham's 
Magazine"  immediately  following  Griswold's  issue  of  the 
memoir,  it  has  not  been  disseminated  and  has  not  had  the 


180      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

publicity  of  Griswold's  scurrilous  article.  It  was  not  a  part 
of  the  "Works"  and  did  not  circulate  so  extensively.  Poe's 
biographers  have  not  given  it  the  publicity  it  deserves, 
and  certain  ones  have  only  mentioned  it  generally,  omit 
ting  all  that  reflects  on  Griswold  and  all  that  might  serve 
as  a  defense  of  Poe. 

Lambert  A.  Wilmer,  in  a  notable  book  published  in  1859, 
named  "Our  Press  Gang,"  a  collection  of  editorial  writings 
now  a  bibliographical  rarity,  defended  Poe.  Wilmer  was 
editor  of  the  "Saturday  Visiter,"  of  Baltimore,  in  which 
Poe  won  a  prize  with  "Tales  of  the  Folio  Club."  For  many 
years  afterward  Poe  and  Wilmer  were  more  or  less  friendly, 
and  corresponded  at  irregular  intervals.  It  was  the 
"Quacks  of  Helicon,"  written  by  Wilmer,  that  Poe  so 
ardently  defended,  and  in  a  review  of  which  he  strongly 
upheld  Wilmer 's  charges  of  literary  corruption. 

While  Wilmer 's  book  was  not  written  for  the  specific 
purpose  of  rehabilitating  Poe,  it  does  strongly  corrobor 
ate  many  of  Poe's  contentions,  and  justifies  the  stand  Poe 
took  toward  many  writers  and  much  that  they  wrote. 

In  speaking  of  a  newspaper  attack  on  the  memory  of 
Poe,  Wilmer  writes : 

Several  years  ago  I  published  the  following  article  in  a  Philadelphia 
weekly  paper : 

'Edgar  A.  Poe  and  his  Calumniators. — There  is  a  spurious  biog 
raphy  of  Edgar  A.  Poe  which  has  been  extensively  published  in 
newspapers  and  magazines.  It  is  a  hypocritical,  canting  document,  ex 
pressing  commiseration  for  the  follies  and  'crimes'  of  that  'poor  out 
cast  ;'  the  writer  being  evidently  just  such  an  one  as  the  Pharisee  who 
thanked  God  that  he  was  a  better  fellow  than  the  publican.  But  we 
can  tell  the  slanderous  and  malicious  miscreant  who  composed  the 
aforesaid  biography,  that  Edgar  Poe  was  not  the  man  described  by 
this  anonymous  scribbler.  Some  circumstances  mentioned  by  the 
slanderous  hypocrite  we  know  to  be  false,  and  we  have  no  doubt  in  the 
world  that  nearly  all  of  his  statements,  intended  to  throw  odium  and 
discredit  on  the  character  of  the  deceased,  are  scandalous  inventions. 

We  have  much  more  to  say  on  this  subject,  and  we  pledge  ourselves 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      181 

to  show  that  the  article  we  speak  of  is  false  and  defamatory,  when  the 
skulking  author  of  it  becomes  magnanimous  enough  to  take  the 
responsibility  by  fixing  his  name  to  his  malignant  publication.'  I  do 
not  know  that  this  vindication  was  copied  by  a  single  paper ;  whereas 
the  whole  press  of  the  country  seemed  desirous  of  giving  circulation 
and  authenticity  to  the  slanders. 

Again,  under  the  title  "Defamation  of  the  Dead," 
Wilmer  refers  to  the  newspaper  attacks  on  the  memory  of 
Poe: 

The  late  Edgar  A.  Poe  has  been  represented  by  the  American  news 
papers  in  general  as  a  reckless  libertine  and  a  confirmed  inebriate.  I 
do  not  recognize  him  by  this  description,  though  I  was  intimately 
acquainted  with  the  man,  and  had  every  opportunity  to  study  his 
character.  I  have  been  in  company  with  him  every  day  for  many 
months  together;  and,  within  a  period  of  twelve  years,  I  did  not  see 
him  inebriated ;  no,  not  in  a  single  instance.  I  do  not  believe  that  he 
was  ever  habitually  intemperate  until  he  was  made  so  by  grief  and 
many  bitter  disappointments.  And,  with  respect  to  the  charge  of 
libertinism,  I  have  similar  testimony  to  offer.  Of  all  men  that  I  ever 
knew,  he  was  the  most  passionless;  and  I  appeal  to  his  writings  for 
confirmation  of  this  report.  Poets  of  ardent  temperament,  such  as 
Anacreon,  Ovid,  Byron,  and  Tom  Moore,  will  display  their  constitu 
tional  peculiarity  in  their  literary  compositions ;  but  Edgar  Poe  never 
wrote  a  line  that  gives  expression  to  a  libidinous  thought.  The  female 
creations  of  his  fancy  are  all  either  statues  or  angels.  His  conversation, 
at  all  times,  was  as  chaste  as  that  of  a  vestal,  and  his  conduct,  while  I 
knew  him,  was  correspondingly  blameless. 

Poe,  during  his  lifetime,  was  feared  and  hated  by  many  newspaper 
editors  and  other  literary  animalcules,  some  of  whom,  or  their  friends, 
had  been  the  subjects  of  his  scorching  critiques;  and  others  disliked 
him,  naturally  enough,  because  he  was  a  man  of  superior  intellect. 
While  he  lived,  these  resentful  gentlemen  were  discreetly  silent,  but 
they  nursed  their  wrath  to  keep  it  warm,  and  the  first  intelligence  of 
his  death  was  the  signal  for  a  general  onslaught.  The  primal  slander 
against  the  deceased  bard  was  published  in  a  leading  journal  of  Phila 
delphia,  the  'literary  editor'  of  which  [English]  had  formerly  received 
not  only  a  critical  rebuke,  but  something  like  personal  chastisement 
also,  from  the  hands  of  the  departed  poet. 

Since  that  time,  by  continued  and  well  directed  efforts,  the  news 
papers  of  our  country  have  succeeded  in  giving  Poe  a  character  'as 


182      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

black  as  Vulcan's  stithy/  and  in  this  hideous  drapery,  woven  by 
demoniac  malice,  the  unrivalled  poet  of  America  is  now  presented  to 
the  world. 

It  was  the  article  published  in  the  "Edinburgh  Review/' 
quoted  by  the  editor  of  the  "Ladies'  Repository"  that 
induced  Mrs.  Whitman  to  break  her  long  silence.  She 
took  up  the  gauge  of  battle  by  publishing  in  1860  her 
monograph  on  Poe — "Edgar  Poe  and  His  Critics,"  the  first 
book  entirely  devoted  to  a  study  of  his  morals  and  to  the 
rehabilitation  of  his  name.  It  is  an  appreciation  rather  than 
a  biography. 

In  the  preface  Mrs.  Whitman  says : 

Dr.  Griswold's  Memoir  of  Edgar  Poe  has  been  extensively  read  and 
circulated;  its  perverted  facts  and  baseless  assumptions  have  been 
adopted  into  every  subsequent  memoir  and  notice  of  the  poet,  and 
have  been  translated  into  many  languages.  For  ten  years  this  great 
wrong  to  the  dead  has  passed  unchallenged  and  unrebuked. 

It  has  been  assumed  by  a  recent  English  critic  that  'Edgar  Poe  had 
no  friends/  As  an  index  to  a  more  equitable  and  intelligible  theory  of 
the  idiosyncrasies  of  his  life,  and  as  an  earnest  protest  against  the 
spirit  of  Dr.  Griswold's  unjust  memoir,  these  pages  are  submitted  to 
his  more  candid  readers  and  critics  by  One  of  his  Friends. 

This  was  a  confession  not  easy  to  make,  for  it  was  to 
Mrs.  Whitman  that  Poe  was  engaged  to  be  married  while 
he  was  still  a  resident  of  Fordham;  and  it  was  his  reported 
actions  with  reference  to  breaking  the  engagement  that 
Griswold  so  foully  used  in  his  attempt  to  blacken  the 
character  of  Poe. 

Quoting  from  Griswold's  Memoir : 

He  said  to  an  acquaintance  in  New  York,  who  congratulated  him 
upon  the  prospect  of  his  union  with  a  person  of  such  genius  and  so 
many  virtues,  'it  is  a  mistake:  I  am  not  going  to  be  married.'  'Why, 
Mr.  Poe,  I  understand  that  the  banns  have  been  published.'  'I  cannot 
help  what  you  have  heard,  my  dear  Madam,  but  mark  me,  I  will 
not  marry  her.'  He  left  town  the  same  evening  and  next  day  was 
reeling  through  the  streets  of  the  city  which  was  the  lady's  home,  and 
In  the  evening — that  should  have  been  the  evening  before  the  bridal, 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      183 

in  his  drunkenness  he  committed  such  outrages  as  made  it  necessary 
to  summon  the  police.  Here  was  no  insanity  leading  to  indulgence:  he 
went  from  New  York  with  a  determination  thus  to  induce  an  ending 
of  the  engagement ;  and  he  succeeded. 

Even  had  this  story  been  true,  the  use  of  so  prominent  a 
woman's  name  to  point  a  tale  was  not  a  chivalrous  act.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  the  whole  scene,  so  graphically  painted,  was 
a  fabrication  and  the  proof  that  it  was  not  true  was  at 
once  offered,  but  Griswold  never  retracted  it. 

Mrs.  Whitman  did  break  her  engagement  with  Poe  be 
cause  she  found  he  had  not  kept  his  promise  of  abstinence. 
He  was  not  rude  in  her  presence  nor  did  he  exhibit  any 
abnormality  except  as  she  has  described.  It  was  she  who 
broke  the  engagement  in  spite  of  Poe's  protests  and  his 
promises  of  reform. 

Mrs.  Whitman,  in  a  letter  to  Gill,  declared  what  already 
had  been  offered  in  evidence,  that : 

No  such  scene  as  that  described  by  Dr.  Griswold  ever  took  place  in 
my  presence.  No  one,  certainly  no  woman  who  had  the  slightest  ac 
quaintance  with  Edgar  Poe,  could  have  credited  the  story  for  an 
instant.  He  was  instinctively  and  essentially  a  gentleman,  utterly 
incapable,  even  in  moments  of  excitement  and  delirium,  of  such  an 
outrage  as  Dr.  Griswold  has  ascribed  to  him. 

She  dismissed  the  Griswold  allegations  very  briefly: 

It  is  not  our  purpose  at  present  specially  to  review  Dr.  Griswold's 
numerous  misrepresentations,  and  misstatements.  Some  of  the  more 
injurious  of  these  anecdotes  were  disproved,  during  the  life  of  Dr. 
Griswold,  in  the  New  York  Tribune,  and  other  leading  journals,  with 
out  eliciting  from  him  any  public  statement  in  explanation  or  apology. 
Quite  recently  we  have  had,  through  the  columns  of  the  'Home  Jour 
nal,'  the  refutation  of  another  calumnious  story,  which  for  ten  years 
has  been  going  the  rounds  of  the  English  and  American  periodicals. 

We  have  authority  for  stating  that  many  of  the  disgraceful  anec 
dotes,  so  industriously  collected  by  Dr.  Griswold,  are  utterly  fabulous, 
while  others  are  perversions  of  the  truth,  more  injurious  in  their 
effects  than  unmitigated  fiction.  We  propose  simply  to  point  out  some 
unformed  critical  estimates  which  have  obtained  currency  among 


184       POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

readers  who  have  had  but  a  partial  acquaintance  with  Mr.  Poe's  more 
imaginative  writings,  and  to  record  our  own  impressions  of  the  char 
acter  and  genius  of  the  poet,  as  derived  from  personal  observation  and 
from  the  testimony  of  those  who  knew  him. 

Mrs.  Whitman  was  a  woman  of  remarkable  personality. 
John  Hay  (himself  a  marked  example  of  a  sane  genius  with 
depressive  seizures)  described  the  dominating  influence  she 
exerted  over  him  while  he  was  at  Brown  University. 

Mrs.  Whitman,  knowing  her  subject  and  dealing  with 
so  many  phases  of  it  that  were  personally  embarrassing, 
treated  the  whole  matter  as  only  a  woman  of  great  refine 
ment  could.  It  is  true  that  the  picture  she  draws  is  colored 
by  an  overweening  tenderness ;  but  one  cannot  too  harshly 
criticize  grief  for  a  dead  friend,  and  if  tears  of  sorrow 
blind  the  eyes  and  mental  reservations  prevent  over-full 
statements  of  matters  essentially  personal,  can  we  wonder 
if  the  outline  occasionally  is  blurred  ?  She  does  not  refer  to 
her  own  close  association  with  Poe,  but  describes,  in  a 
manner  purely  impersonal,  not  so  much  her  admiration  of 
Poe,  the  man,  as  her  admiration  for  Poe,  the  man  of  letters. 

She  describes,  as  only  a  woman  can,  what  there  was  in 
Poe  that  so  strongly  appealed  to  the  women  with  whom  he 
associated.  Apparently,  the  basis  of  that  appeal  was  the 
complete  deference  and  the  chivalrous  attitude  which, 
even  in  thought,  characterized  Poe's  treatment  of  women. 
Never  in  the  whole  course  of  his  life,  either  in  what  he 
wrote  or  what  he  said,  did  he  treat  woman  other  than  as 
the  angel  embodiment  of  man.  In  Mrs.  Whitman's  sketch 
is  to  be  noted  especially  an  absolute  freedom  from  any 
touch  of  jealousy  as  she  couples  Poe's  name  with  that  of 
other  women  with  which  it  had  been  associated : 

There  is  a  quiet  drawing  room  in Street,  New  York, — a  sort 

of  fragrant  and  delicious  'clovernook'  in  the  heart  of  the  noisy  city — 
where  hung  some  three  years  ago,  the  original  painting  from  which  this 
engraving  [referring  to  the  portrait  accompanying  Poe's  first  volume 
of  collected  works]  is  a  copy.  Happening  to  meet  there  at  the  time  a 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      185 

company  of  authors  and  poets,  among  whom  were  Mary  Forest,  Alice 
and  Phoebe  Gary,  the  Stoddards,  T.  B.  Aldrich  and  others,  we  heard 
one  of  the  party  say,  in  speaking  of  the  portrait,  that  its  aspect  was 
that  of  a  beautiful  and  desolate  shrine  from  which  the  Genius  had 
departed.  .  .  .  Near  this  luminous  but  impassive  face,  with  its  sad 
and  soulless  eyes,  was  a  portrait  of  Poe's  unrelenting  biographist. 

In  a  recess  opposite  hung  a  picture  of  fascinating  Mrs. ,  whose 

genius  both  had  so  fervently  admired,  and  for  whose  coveted  praise 
and  friendship  both  had  been  competitors.  Looking  at  the  beautiful 
portrait  of  this  lady — the  face  so  full  of  enthusiasm,  and  dreamy 
tropical  sunshine — remembering  the  eloquent  words  of  her  praise,  as 
expressed  in  the  prodigal  and  passionate  exaggerations  of  her  verse, 
one  ceases  to  wonder  at  the  rivalries  and  enmities  enkindled  in  the 
hearts  of  those  who  admired  her  genius  and  her  grace, — rivalries  which 
the  grave  itself  could  not  cancel  or  appease. 

Again  she  wrote: 

A  woman  of  fine  genius,  who  at  this  time  made  his  acquaintance, 
says,  in  some  recently  published  comments  on  his  writings :  'It  was  in 
the  brilliant  circles  that  assembled  in  the  winter  of  1845-6  at  the 
homes  of  Dr.  Dewey,  Miss  Anna  C.  Lynch,  Mr.  Lawson,  and  others, 
that  we  first  met  Edgar  Poe.  His  manners  were  at  these  reunions  re 
fined  and  pleasing,  and  his  style  and  scope  of  conversation  that  of  a 
gentleman  and  a  scholar.  Whatever  may  have  been  his  previous  career, 
there  was  nothing  in  his  manner  nor  in  his  appearance  to  indicate 
excesses.  He  delighted  in  the  society  of  superior  women  and  had  an 
exquisite  perception  of  all  the  graces  of  manner,  and  shades  of  expres 
sion.  He  was  an  admiring  listener,  and  an  unobtrusive  observer.  We 
all  recollect  the  interest  felt  at  the  time  in  everything  emanating  from 
his  pen — the  relief  it  was  from  the  dullness  of  ordinary  writers — the 
certainty  of  something  fresh  and  suggestive.  His  critiques  were  read 
with  avidity;  not  that  he  convinced  the  judgment,  but  that  people 
felt  their  ability  and  their  courage.  Right  or  wrong  he  was  terribly  in 
earnest/ 

Mrs.  Whitman  dissented  from  the  frequently  expressed 
view  that  Poe's  own  personality  was  infused  into  that  of 
the  characters  which  he  often  so  vividly  depicted  in  his 
weird  tales  and  poems,  but  she  did  believe  that  his  ab 
normal  mentality  was  directly  responsible  for  the  character 
of  his  creative  work : 


186      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

His  proud  intellectual  assumption  of  the  supremacy  of  the  individual 
soul  was  but  an  expression  of  his  imperious  longings  for  immortality 
and  its  recoil  from  the  haunting  phantasms  of  death  and  annihila 
tion;  while  the  theme  of  all  his  more  imaginative  writings  is  a  love 
that  survives  the  dissolution  of  the  mortal  body  and  oversweeps  the 
grave.  His  mental  and  temperamental  idiosyncracies  fitted  him  to 
come  readily  into  rapport  with  psychal  and  spiritual  influences.  Many 
of  his  strange  narratives  had  a  degree  of  truth  in  them  which  he  was 
unwilling  to  avow.  In  one  of  this  class  he  makes  the  narrator  say,  "I 
cannot  even  now  regard  these  experiences  as  a  dream,  yet  it  is  difficult 
for  us  now  to  say  how  otherwise  they  should  be  termed.  Let  us  suppose 
only  that  the  soul  of  man,  today,  is  on  the  brink  of  stupendous  psychal 
discoveries.  ...  He  often  spoke  of  the  imageries  and  incidents  of  his 
inner  life  as  more  vivid  and  veritable  than  those  of  his  outer  exper 
ience.  We  find  in  some  pencilled  notes  appended  to  a  manuscript  copy 
of  one  of  his  later  poems — Ligeia — the  words  'all  that  I  have  here 
expressed  were  actually  present  to  me.  Remember  the  mental  condi 
tion  which  gave  rise  to  Ligeia — recall  the  passage  of  which  I  spoke, 
and  observe  the  coincidence!'  With  all  the  fine  alchemy  of  his  subtle 
intellect  he  sought  to  analyze  the  character  and  the  conditions  of  this 
introverted  life.  'I  regard  these  visions,'  he  says,  'even  as  they  arise, 
with  an  awe  which  in  some  measure  moderates  or  tranquilizes  the 
ecstasy — I  so  regard  them  through  a  conviction  that  this  ecstasy,  in 
itself,  is  of  a  character  supernal  to  the  human  nature — is  a  glimpse  of 
the  spirits  outer  world.'  .  .  .  His  mind  indeed  was  a  'Haunted 
Palace,'  echoing  to  the  footfalls  of  angels  and  demons.  'No  man,' 
he  says,  'has  recorded,  no  man  has  dared  to  record,  the  wonders  of 
his  inner  life.'  Is  there  then,  no  significance  in  this  'supernatural 
soliciting?'  Is  there  no  evidence  of  a  wise  purpose,  an  epochal  fitness, 
in  the  appearance,  at  this  precise  era,  of  a  mind  so  rarely  gifted,  and 
accessible  from  peculiarities  of  psychal  and  physical  organization  to 
the  subtle  vibrations  of  an  ethereal  medium  conveying  but  feeble 
impressions  to  the  senses  of  ordinary  persons? 

The  peculiar  character  of  his  intellect  seemed  without  a  prototype 
in  literature.  He  had  more  than  De  Quincey's  power  of  analysis,  with 
a  constructive  unity  and  completeness  of  which  the  great  English 
essayist  has  given  no  indication.  His  pre-eminence  in  constructive  and 
analytical  skill  was  beginning  to  be  universally  admitted,  and  the 
fame  and  prestige  of  his  genius  were  rapidly  increasing.  ...  A 
recent  and  not  too  lenient  critic  tells  us  that  'it  was  his  sensitiveness 
to  artistic  imperfections,  rather  than  any  malignity  of  feeling,  that 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      187 

made  his  criticisms  so  severe,  and  procured  him  a  host  of  enemies 
among  persons  towards  whom  he  entertained  no  personal*  ill-will.' 

Mrs.  Whitman's  final  estimate  is  characteristic  of  the 
woman : 

We  confess  to  a  half  faith  in  the  old  superstition  of  the  significance 
of  anagrams  when  we  find,  in  the  transposed  letters  of  Edgar  Poe's 
name,  the  words,  a  God-peer:  words  which,  taken  in  connection  with 
his  daring  speculations,  seem  to  have  in  them  a  mocking  and  malign 
import  which  is  not  man's  nor  angel's. 

The  book  is  filled  with  personal  reminiscences  and  it 
contains  many  anecdotes  showing  Poe's  lovable  nature 
and  the  tender  care  he  gave  his  wife.  It  barely  touches  on 
matters  controversial,  nor  is  there  more  than  a  sympa 
thetic  reference  to  his  sins  of  commission.  While  she  does 
not  deny  that  Poe  had  occasional  periods  of  intoxication, 
she  draws  a  picture  of  his  sufferings  following  these  out 
breaks  that  make  us,  who  know  the  compulsory  nature  of 
these  seizures,  more  keenly  realize  the  bitter  sorrow  that 
followed  and  how  fully  he  expiated  them.: 

Poe's  private  letters  to  his  friends  offer  abundant  evidence  that  he 
was  not  insensible  to  the  keenest  pangs  of  remorse.  Again  and  again 
did  he  say  to  the  Demon  that  tracked  his  path  'Anathema  Maran- 
atha'  but  again  and  again  did  it  return  to  torture  and  subdue.  He  saw 
the  handwriting  on  the  wall  but  had  no  power  to  avert  the  impending 
doom. 

Apparently  the  writings  of  Poe  made  a  strong  appeal  to 
the  psychical  beliefs  that  are  said  to  have  dominated 
Mrs.  Whitman.  She  was  a  student  of  the  occult  and 
strongly  believed  in  spirit  manifestations. 

No  subject  of  recent  years  has  excited  more  interest 
among  psychologists  than  this  question  of  a  "sixth  sense." 
Although  eminent  names  recently  have  been  added  to 
those  who  acknowledge  definite  belief  in  spiritualistic  phe 
nomena,  no  answer  can  be  made  that  may  be  considered 
final;  nor  has  any  proof  been  adduced  that  this  "sixth 


188      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

sense/'  which  I  believe  does  exist,  is  more  of  a  phenomenon 
than  the  other  five,  except  that  only  certain  highly  or 
ganized  "sensitives,"  or  mediums,  possess  it  and  for  this 
reason  develop  auto-hypnosis. 

Mrs.  J.  K.  Barney,  who  was  an  intimate  friend  of  Mrs. 
Whitman,  and  who  was  invited  to  meet  Poe  during  one  of 
his  visits,  gives  this  remarkable  account  of  an  incident  that 
is  worth  recording : 

On  one  of  his  visits  to  Providence,  Mrs.  Whitman  invited  a  number 
of  literary  people  to  her  home  that  they  might  have  the  opportunity 
of  seeing  Poe  and  listening  to  his  wonderful  converse.  The  guests  were 
assembled — all  distinguished  people — discussing  books  and  the  like. 
Poe  and  Mrs.  Whitman  sat  across  the  room  from  each  other.  They 
were  theorizing  on  the  poetic  principle.  After  a  time  the  other  voices 
ceased.  All  were  drawn  toward  Poe,  whose  eyes  were  gleaming  and 
whose  utterance  was  most  eloquent.  His  eyes  were  fixed  on  Mrs.  Whit 
man.  After  another  time  Poe  stopped  talking,  keeping  his  eyes  on 
Helen.  Of  a  sudden  the  company  perceived  that  Poe  and  Helen  were 
greatly  agitated.  Simultaneously  both  rose  from  their  chairs  and 
walked  toward  the  center  of  the  room.  Meeting  he  held  her  in  his 
arms,  kissed  her;  they  stood  for  a  moment,  then  he  led  her  to  her  seat. 
There  was  a  dead  silence  through  all  this  strange  proceeding. 

Whether  or  not  Poe  so  intended  it,  this  was  a  marvelous 
exhibition  of  the  mesmeric  power  he  unconsciously  exerted 
over  the  "sensitives"  whom  he  so  strongly  influenced. 

For  the  decade  following  these  publications  few  refer 
ences  to  Poe  or  his  work  can  be  found.  The Redfield  edition 
continued  as  the  authoritative  Poe  collection  and  until 
the  year  1876  it  was  republished  with  the  Griswold 
memoir  still  occupying  its  post  of  honor  uncontradicted— 
even  unquestioned.  The  few  things  written  concerning 
Poe  I  have  found  most  difficult  to  collect,  not  only  because 
of  the  obscurity  of  the  journals  in  which  they  were  pub 
lished,  but  especially  for  the  reason  that  only  incidental 
references  were  made  either  to  him  or  to  the  things  he 
wrote.  Those  who  attempted  the  rehabilitation  of  Poe 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      189 

found  it  difficult  to  controvert  the  statements  that  had 
been  so  confidently  made,  and  were  at  a  loss  to  give  an 
authoritative  answer,  even  though  it  was  known  that 
personal  animosity  and  a  vindictive  spirit  had  animated 
many  statements  contained  in  the  Griswold  memoir. 

In  England  James  Hannay  had  attempted  to  stem  the 
tide  of  public  prejudice  and  had  written  several  short 
biographical  sketches,  but  he  could  not  speak  with  author 
ity.  Later,  John  H.  Ingram  became  a  most  active  defender, 
but  his  statements  were  so  strongly  partisan  that  no 
credence  was  given  them.  However,  these  two  writers  did 
succeed  in  casting  some  doubt  upon  certain  parts  of  the 
Griswold  memoir  and  their  defense  encouraged  others  to 
make  independent  investigations. 

In  the  early  70's  there  was  a  Poe  revival,  partly  caused 
by  the  many  American  and  English  biographies,  but 
mainly  due  to  Poe's  increasing  literary  renown.  There 
were  many  still  living — a  few,  unfortunately,  the  posses 
sors  of  senile  memories — who  insisted  on  recalling  Poe  as 
they  remembered  him.  They  had  entertained  an  "angel 
unawares,"  and  they  believed  this  to  be  a  good  reason  for 
recalling,  thirty  years  later,  all  the  facts  of  Poe's  life,  oc 
casionally  reinforced  with  their  imagination. 

The  most  flagrant  offender  was  the  physician  that  cared 
for  Poe  at  the  time  of  his  death,  although  he  had  many  prolix 
confreres. 

Quotations  havealready  been  madefromSartain's  "Rem 
iniscences"  as  to  Poe's  mental  state  during  an  attack  of 
delirium.  Among  other  interesting  matters  that  Sartain  re 
lates  was  an  interview  between  Griswold  and  English : 

Speaking  of  Poe  recalls  to  me  an  amusing  scene  I  witnessed  in  my 
office  between  two  of  the  literary  fraternity,  Rufus  W.  Griswold  and 
the  well-known  author  of  Ben  Bolt  [Thomas  Dunn  English.]  The  latter 
was  chatting  delightfully  with  me  when  in  walked  Griswold.  I  knew  of 
course  that  they  must  be  acquainted,  and  yet  noticing  that  they  acted 


190      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

like  strangers  I  apologized  for  neglecting  to  introduce  them  and  for 
assuming  that  they  knew  each  other.  'Oh  yes,'  said  one  grimly, 
'we  know  one  another.'  So  I  saw  there  was  bad  blood  between  them. 
A  cheerless  talk  ensued  for  a  time,  when  a  name  was  spoken  by  chance 
that  had  a  magical  effect.  It  was  Poe,  and  they  fraternized  at  once, 
giving  it  to  him  right  and  left,  agreeing  that  he  was  a  most  unjust 
critic  and  a  bad  fellow  in  every  way.  The  fact  is  Poe  made  himself 
enemies  all  around  by  the  cutting  severity  of  his  criticisms. 

An  episode  that  has  received  much  attention  was  Poe's 
courtship  of  Mrs.  Shelton. 

The  underlying  motive  that  induced  Poe  to  renew  his 
suit  to  Mrs.  Shelton  was  not  the  revival  of  an  old  love,  or 
such  mental  derangement  as  he  exhibited  in  his  pursuit  of 
Mrs.  Osgood  and  his  ardent  courtship  of  Mrs.  Whitman. 
He  recognized  that  his  life  work  was  finished — as  he 
stated  in  one  of  his  last  letters  to  Mrs.  Clemm  "I  have  no 
desire  to  live  since  I  have  finished  "Eureka."  It  was  pro 
bably  a  desperate  attempt  to  find  some  harbor  of  refuge 
for  his  storm-tossed  life,  with  possibly  a  renewal  of  his 
Stylus  obsession.  Even  while  he  was  arranging  the  details 
of  this  marriage  he  planned,  in  a  letter  written  to  Mrs. 
Clemm,  that  he  would  so  place  his  future  home  as  to  be 
"near  Annie."  There  is  no  foundation  for  the  assertion 
made  by  Moran  in  his  "Defense,"  that  Mrs.  Shelton  was 
"his  first  love,  his  Annabel  Lee." 

Moran's  statement  was  inspired  by  Mrs.  Shelton,  it 
was  written  at  her  request,  and  it  was  dedicated  to  her. 
This  is  the  same  Mrs.  Shelton  whom  Poe,  as  a  boy,  was 
said  to  have  loved,  and  to  whom,  under  the  name  Susan 
Royster,  he  was  engaged  while  still  a  resident  of  Rich 
mond.  In  his  later  life,  after  the  death  of  Virginia,  they 
again  met  and  their  engagement  was  rumored.  Mrs. 
Shelton  was  an ' '  affluent' '  widow  with  such  strong  religious 
feeling  that,  during  the  time  of  Poe's  courtship,  she  gave, 
as  a  reason  for  refusing  to  entertain  him:  "I  told  him  I 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      191 

was  on  my  way  to  church  and  that  I  allowed  nothing  to 
interfere  with  this  duty." 

It  seems  there  must  have  been  some  amatory  passages 
between  Poe  and  Mrs.  Shelton  for  Poe  wrote  Mrs.  Clemm : 
"I  think  she  loves  me  more  devotedly  than  any  one  I 
ever  knew  &  I  cannot  help  loving  her  in  return."  That 
he  wished  to  make  Mrs.  Shelton  believe  he  remembered 
her,  and  had  always  cherished  her  picture  is  evidenced 
by  a  letter  he  wrote  Mrs.  Clemm  asking  her  to  furnish 
certain  suppositious  proofs  of  this  unforgotten  love — the 
text  of  which  he  enclosed. 

Surely  this  was  not  an  ardent  courtship  and  if  it  was  a 
continuation  of  the  love-affair  that  is  said  to  have  burned 
so  brightly  twenty  years  before,  it  is  evident  that  the 
flame  had  sunk  to  a  feeble  flicker.  A  little  later  it  was 
completely  extinguished ;  for  there  were  mutual  recrimina 
tions  and  demands  strenuously  made  both  by  Poe  and 
Mrs.  Shelton  that  letters  which  had  passed  between  them 
should  be  returned.  Yet  in  her  old  age  Mrs.  Shelton 
treasured  the  memory  of  Poe,  insisted  that  she  was  his 
ideal  Annabel  Lee,  and  that  it  was  she  who  had  inspired 
Poe  to  write : 

For  the  moon  never  beams  without  bringing  me  dreams 

Of  the  beautiful  Annabel  Lee ; 
And  the  stars  never  rise  but  I  see  the  bright  eyes 

Of  the  beautiful  Annabel  Lee; 
And  so,  all  the  night  tide,  I  lie  down  by  the  side 
Of  my  darling,  my  darling,  my  life  and  my  bride 

In  her  sepulchre  there  by  the  sea — 

In  her  tomb  by  the  sounding  sea. 

It  is  doubtful  if  Miss  Royster  could  have  inspired  this 
poem;  it  is  certain  that  the  twenty-year-after  Mrs. 
Shelton  did  not.  Not  only  was  she  alive  and  still  in  the 
performance  of  her  "religious  duties,"  but  before  Annabel 


192      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

Lee  was  published  she  had  threatened  Poe  with  a  law 
suit  for  the  return  of  her  letters. 

Many  other  women  have  claimed  this  same  distinction. 
They  ignored  Virginia. 

Mrs.  Weiss  writes  concerning  Mrs.  Shelton : 

Mrs.  Shelton  during  a  few  days  absence  of  Poe  at  the  country 
home  of  John  Mackenzie,  came  to  Duncan  Lodge  and  appealed 
to  Mrs.  Mackenzie  to  influence  Poe  in  returning  her  letters.  I  saw 
her  on  this  occasion — a  tall,  rather  masculine-looking  woman, 
who  drew  her  veil  over  her  face  as  she  passed  us  on  the  porch, 
though  I  caught  a  glimpse  of  large,  shadowy,  light  blue  eyes 
which  must  have  once  been  handsome. 

Mrs.  Susan  A.  Weiss,  in  1907,  published  a  book  en 
titled  "Home  Life  of  Poe,"  in  which  an  intimate  sketch  of 
Poe's  two  last  visits  to  Richmond  is  purported  to  be  given. 
It  is  interesting  because  it  contains  details  of  the  events 
that  transpired  immediately  preceding  Poe's  death. 

From  her  own  account  Poe  was  on  friendly  terms  with 
her,  confided  in  her  literary  judgment,  and  discussed 
many  personal  matters  relating  to  his  plans.  Evidently 
she  was  a  keen  observer  and,  anticipating  Poe's  fame  and 
the  curiosity  that  would  be  aroused  regarding  the  facts  of 
these  Richmond  visits,  she  gathered  up  many  details  and 
pigeon-holed  them  for  future  reference.  The  facts  she 
relates  are  interesting,  and  the  Richmond  gossip  of  those 
days  makes  entertaining  reading.  Whether  they  are  the 
reminiscences  of  one  who  has  idealized  Poe  and  who 
cannot  distinguish  fact  from  fiction,  or  whether  she  is 
one  whose  memory  has  become  weakened  and  has  vis 
ualized  these  circumstances  through  the  rheumy  eyes  of 
age,  or  whether,  in  her  desire  that  her  name  descend  to 
posterity  linked  with  that  of  Poe,  she  has  romanced  with 
known  facts,  are  questions  difficult  to  answer. 

Authorities  are  not  agreed  as  to  the  amount  of  faith 
one  should  place  in  these  reminiscences;  and  it  has  been 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      193 

claimed  that,  as  an  imaginative  writer,  Mrs.  Weiss  ranks 
with  Dr.  Moran. 

Woodberry  who,  as  a  rule,  accepted  no  statement  for 
the  text  of  his  "Life  of  Poe"  that  did  not  appeal  to  his 
critical  judgment,  leaving  all  else  for  his  "notes,"  accepts 
Mrs.  Weiss  as  an  authority,  and  bases  the  details  of  the 
concluding  events  of  Poe's  life  on  her  statements. 

Whitty,  another  well-known  Poe  authority,  who  lives  in 
Richmond  and  who  is  conversant  with  many  statements 
that  have  never  been  published  because  of  the  possibility 
that  they  can  be  classed  as  unauthenticated  gossip,  does 
not  give  credence  to  all  that  is  contained  in  Mrs.  Weiss 's 
book  as  a  detailed  and  reliable  account  of  Poe's  life. 

Although  I  quote  Mrs.  Weiss  I  question  the  value  of 
her  testimony.  She  was  a  mute — an  infirmity  that  rendered 
almost  impossible  some  of  the  conversations  and  much 
of  the  personal  intercourse  so  distinctly  remembered  and 
so  accurately  recorded  in  the  "Home  Life  of  Poe." 

The  thing  that  made  this  revival  notable  was  that  no 
one  seemed  to  remember  anything  to  Poe's  discredit. 
Time  had  erased  all  personal  bitterness.  There  was  one 
exception.  Richard  Henry  Stoddard,  who  at  least  on  one 
occasion  had  met  Poe,  published  his  "Personal  Recollec 
tions"  that  contained  some  interesting  Poe  matter.  Later 
this  was  used  as  an  introduction  to  Poe's  Works  as  re- 
published  by  Widdleton.  It  contained  no  reiteration  of  the 
Griswold  charges,  yet  it  detailed  unkind  statements  as  to 
his  personal  recollection  of  Poe.  He  could  not  forget  the 
one  memorable  occasion  on  which  they  met,  even  if  it 
was  that  relation  a  door  mat  bears  to  the  foot  that  stamps 
upon  it.  Possibly  the  most  sensitive  thing  on  earth  is  the 
pride  of  a  young  author  as  to  his  "Rejected  Addresses." 

I  knocked  at  the  street-door,  and  was  presently  shown  up  to 
Poe's  rooms  on  the  second  or  third  floor.  He  received  me  very 
kindly.  I  told  my  errand,  and  he  promised  that  my  Ode  should  be 


194      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

printed  next  week.  I  was  struck  with  his  poetic  manner,  and  the 
elegance  of  his  appearance.  He  was  slight  and  pale,  I  saw,  with 
large  and  luminous  eyes,  and  was  dressed  in  black.  When  I  quitted 
the  room  I  could  not  but  see  his  wife,  who  was  lying  upon  a  bed, 
apparently  asleep.  She,  too,  was  dressed  in  black,  and  was  pale 
and  wasted.  'Poor  lady,'  I  thought,  'she  is  dying  of  consumption.' 
.  .  I  bought  the  next  number  of  the  Broadway  Journal,  but  my  Ode 
was  not  in  it.  It  was  mentioned,  however,  somewhat  in  this  style: 
'We  decline  to  publish  the  "Ode  on  a  Grecian  Flute"  unless  we  can 
be  assured  of  its  authenticity.'  .  .  I  made  time  to  take  another  long 
walk  to  the  office  of  the  Broadway  Journal,  and  asked  again  for 
Mr.  Poe.  .  .  He  was  sitting  on  a  chair  asleep,  but  the  publisher 
awoke  him.  He  was  in  a  morose  mood.  'Mr.  Poe,'  I  said,  'I  have 
called  to  assure  you  of  the  authenticity  of  the  "Ode  on  a  Grecian 
Flute."  He  gave  me  the  lie  direct,  declared  that  I  never  wrote  it, 
and  threatened  to  chastise  me  unless  I  left  him  at  once.  .  .  I  left 
him  as  he  desired,  and  walked  slowly  home,  'chewing  the  cud  of 
sweet  and  bitter  fancies.' 

Evidently  Stoddard  found  Poe  in  one  of  his  "moods." 
Stoddard  has  been  regarded,  and  has  been  quoted,  as  a 
Griswold  supporter  in  this  Poe  controversy,  and  it  is  not 
in  evidence  that  he  ever  publicly  criticised  the  Griswold 
memoir;  yet,  by  a  strange  circumstance,  the  "Edgar  A. 
Poe  Shrine/'  recently  opened  in  Richmond  and  which  has 
become  the  recipient  of  much  valuable  Poe  material,  is 
in  possession  of  a  letter  written  by  Stoddard  to  Samuel 
Henshaw.  J.  H.  Whitty,  president  of  the  "Shrine,"  allows 
me  to  quote  concerning  the  Stoddard  letter  the  following 
statement :  "The  'Edgar  A.  Poe  Shrine'  has  in  its  posession 
an  autograph  letter,  dated  September  24,  1872,  written 
by  Stoddard  to  Henshaw,  in  which  Stoddard  states  that 
Griswold  took  no  pains,  in  his  Poe  materials,  to  sift  facts 
from  fancies,  and  that  Griswold  neither  could,  nor  did  he 
attempt  to  weigh  evidence  as  it  concerned  Poe." 

These  published  reminiscences  were  indicative  of  the  pride 
America  was  beginning  to  take  in  the  name  of  Poe,  and  of 
her  desire  publicly  to  honor  Poe's  memory.  The  culmination 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      195 

of  this  movement  was  the  public  monument  erected  over 
the  remains  of  Poe  at  Baltimore  in  1875.  Later  other  evi 
dences  of  the  appreciation  in  which  Poe  was  held  were 
made  manifest.  Probably  the  greatest  honor  conferred  was 
the  Actor's  Monument  sculptured  by  Richard  H.  Park, 
for  this  was  the  first  honor  of  a  national,  and  not  sectional, 
character. 

In  the  year  1877  William  F.  Gill  published  'The  Life  of 
Edgar  Allan  Poe."  This  was  the  first  systematic  attempt 
to  controvert  Griswold's  statements  and  to  rehabilitate 
Poe's  character.  In  preparing  this  biography  Gill  consulted 
a  few  of  Poe's  old  friends  among  whom  was  Mrs.  Clemm. 
He  also  had  access  to  original  manuscripts  and  corres 
pondence,  but  he  admitted  nothing  unfavorable  to  Poe,  or 
that  in  any  way  explained  his  abnormal  mental  state. 

Gill  is  not  an  artist,  and  must  not  be  blamed  because  the 
resulting  delineation  has  not  the  fidelity  of  a  Hogarth 
or  the  strength  of  Rembrandt.  At  least,  he  did  the  best  he 
could ;  and  he  was  the  first  biographer,  after  nearly  thirty 
years  of  "consent,"  to  attempt  to  gather  the  data  and 
clearly  to  present  the  facts  on  which  a  biography  of  Poe 
should  rest.  That  he  was  carried  away  by  enthusiasm  and 
a  love  for  his  subject  was  a  temperamental  fault  and,  in 
the  circumstances,  excusable.  His  life  of  Poe  cannot  be 
accepted  either  as  critical  or  unbiased. 

Although  Hannay's  effort  to  rehabilitate  Poe  met  with 
adverse  criticism,  and  his  statements,  as  against  those  of 
Griswold  and  Briggs,  received  slight  credence,  he  con 
tinued  a  faithful,  though  unadvised,  defender  of  the  poet. 
It  should  be  noted,  however,  that  he  regarded  Poe's  unto 
ward  acts  as  the  result  of  temporary  mental  disturbance 
rather  than  the  consequence  of  a  vicious  life. 

Another  Englishman,  John  H.  Ingram,  wrote  many 
papers  deal  ing  with  Poe  and  his  traducers,  and  he  prefixed  a 
memoir  to  an  edition  of  Poe's  works  in  which  he  attempted 


196       POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

to  disprove  many  of  Griswold's  statements  and  to  bring 
out  much  testimony  that  tended  to  establish  not  only  the 
falsity  of  these  statements  but  to  entirely  rehabilitate  the 
good  name  of  Poe. 

In  1880  Ingram  published  an  amplification  of  his  former 
studies :  "Edgar  Allan  Poe :  His  Life,  Letters  and  Opinions/' 

This  work  remains  a  valuable  contribution  to  the  life  of 
Poe  because  in  it  a  critical  study  was  attempted  and,  for 
the  first  time,  many  of  Griswold's  allegations  were  ques 
tioned  and  certain  of  them  were  refuted.  In  his  chapter  on 
the  "Biographies  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,"  Ingram  sharply 
criticised  Didier,  another  Poe  memorialist,  for  "forgetting 
in  the  hurry  of  publication,  to  acknowledge  the  chief 
source  of  his  'much  fresh  and  interesting  information/ ' 

Ingram's  memory  proved  equally  treacherous  in  that 
he  made  no  mention  of  Gill's  "Life,"  although  he  discussed 
many  of  the  same  questions  that  Gill  formerly  had  argued : 

In  March  1850  was  published,  in  the  Southern  Literary  Messenger, 
what  Griswold  styles  an  'Eulogium'  on  Poe,  but  what  really  was  a 
still  more  dastardly  attack  on  the  dead  man  than  the  unsavory  'Lud- 
wig'  article.  It  had  evidently  been  written  and  printed  in  hot  haste, 
and  was  so  disgraceful  and  cowardly  that  the  editorial  proprietor  of 
the  magazine,  Mr.  John  R.  Thompson,  deemed  it  necessary  to  append 
a  short  printed  note,  to  the  effect  that  had  it  not  been  inserted  during 
his  absence,  and  not  been  seen  by  him  till  too  late  to  stop  it,  it  should 
not  have  appeared  in  the  Messenger.  Who  wrote  this  article?  It  is 
generally  ascribed  to  Mr.  J.  M.  Daniel ;  yet,  strange  to  say,  it  not  only 
uses  lengthy  passages  of  'Ludwig's'  sketch  without  inverted  commas, 
or  other  signs  of  quotation,  but,  when  Griswold's  long  'Memoir  of 
Poe*  appeared  in  the  International  Magazine,  he  also  made  use  of  long 
extracts  from  the  'Eulogium'  without  acknowledgment.  Certainly 
he  does  refer  to  it  as  his  authority  for  one  of  the  blackest  crimes  he 
charges  Poe  with,  and  which  he  himself  not  unaptly  styles  unfit  for 
'any  register  but  that  of  hell.'  Was  not  this  miscalled  'defender' 
Griswold  himself  or  some  one  acting  under  his  inspiration? 

Thefewdelinquenciesof  Poe  that  Ingram  accepted  as  true 
were  explained  in  a  manner  that  does  credit  to  Ingram's 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      197 

ingenuity,  although  they  were  not  convincing  answers. 
This  partisanship  was  unfortunate. To  abuse  Griswold  and 
to  ignore  the  delinquencies  with  which  Poe  was  charged 
was  not  a  sufficient  answer  to  serious  accusations.  Too 
much  was  known  of  Poe's  eccentricities  and  of  his  alco 
holic  habits  either  to  ignore  them  or  pass  them  over  with 
a  simple  denial.  Concessions  and  explanations  given  by 
former  biographers  were  judged  by  Ingram  to  have  been 
unwisely  made : 

The  best  known  of  these  was  the  essay  of  Baudelaire,  and  it  is  chiefly 
remarkable  as  the  attempt,  by  a  man  of  genius,  to  explain  Poe's  char 
acter  as  described  by  Griswold,  by  an  ingenious  theory  of  his  own.  Of 
course  he  failed  in  that,  however  valuable  his  eSsay  otherwise  may  be 
and  truly  is.  Next  in  importance  to  the  French  critic's  characterization 
of  Poe,  is  that  of  James  Hannay.  It  is  a  charming  and  appreciative 
sketch,  but  having  no  biographical  details  other  than  Griswold's  to 
go  by,  and  being  as  instinctively  attracted  to  Poe  as  Baudelaire, 
Hannay  also  started  a  theory  as  ingenious  and  as  unsatisfactory  as 
his  to  account  for  the  poet's  presumed  misdeeds. 

Baudelaire's  belief  that  alcohol  and  opium  were  the 
source  of  Poe'spowerof  imagination  and  that  from  these  he 
obtained  his  inspiration,  was  rejected.  Nor  did  he  agree 
that  temporary  mental  states,  suggested  by  Hannay  and 
known  to  have  afflicted  so  many  men  of  genius  with  re 
curring  states  of  mental  depression,  was  a  satisfactory 
explanation.  He  regarded  Poe  as  a  maligned  and  misjudged 
man,  and  failed  to  recognize  the  nervous  diathesis  as  the 
basis  for  certain  of  his  vagaries. 

From  a  study  of  these  fragmentary  and  biased  biog 
raphies  it  became  evident  that  a  new  method  of  approach 
must  be  found  in  order  to  gain  an  intelligent  understand 
ing  of  Poe's  life  and  character.  The  thing  most  necessary 
was  a  sifting  of  true  statements  from  false  as  they  related 
to  Poe's  neurosis,  and  a  re-presentation  of  Poe  facts  as  dis 
tinguished  from  the  Poe  myth.  As  frequently  happens, 


198      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

when  the  necessity  arises  a  man  can  be  found  capable  of 
accomplishing  the  required  task. 

This  work  was  assigned  by  Charles  Dudley  Warner, 
editor  of  the  "American  Men  of  Letters"  series,  to  George 
E.  Woodberry,  at  that  time  a  young  and  unknown  writer. 

Woodberry,  that  painstaking  biographer  on  whom  I 
have  depended  for  many  of  my  facts,  did  not  select  his 
subject,  nor  was  he  drawn  to  it  by  personal  or  literary  in 
clination  ;  his  architect  set  him  the  task  and,  like  a  master 
carpenter,  he  builded  as  well  as  he  knew.  Selecting  sound 
material  where  strength  was  needed,  he  often  left  knot 
holes  as  peepsights,  and  made  no  effort  to  conceal  or  throw 
aside  inferior  and,  occasionally,  rotten  material.  Neither  the 
situation  nor  the  plan  inspired  him. 

I  was  asked  by  my  friend,  the  late  Charles  Dudley  Warner,  in 
1883,  to  write  the  life  of  Poe  for  the  'American  Men  of  Letters  Series,' 
which  he  was  then  editing.  My  attention  had  never  been  drawn  to  Poe, 
nor  my  interest  specially  excited  by  his  works;  so  that  I  entered  upon 
my  task,  my  first  important  literary  commission,  with  a  fresh  mind ; 
and,  though  contact  with  the  subject  may  have  bred  prejudice,  I  had 
none  at  the  outset. 

This  from  a  literary  man  who  proposed  dispassionately 
to  discuss  and  anatomize  a  genius,  not  as  a  surgeon  would 
perform  some  merciful  operation  on  a  patient  he  loved,  but 
as  a  vivisectionist  would  dissect  some  unfriended  animal  in 
order  to  demonstrate  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  and 
would  run  his  scalpel  into  all  the  heart's  compartments, 
and  play  with  its  fibers !  No  pity,  no  love,  swayed  the  hand ; 
only  the  deliberate  purpose  to  demonstrate  a  fact,  however 
cruelly  the  knife  hurt,  however  wildly  the  heart  palpitated. 

To  write  a  popular  biography  one  must  love  one's  sub 
ject.  Had  not  Boswell  loved,  as  well  as  revered,  his  John 
son,  how  easily  could  he  have  dwelt  on  the  foibles,  the 
vanities,  the  contradictions,  and  the  absurdities  which 
invariably  are  a  part  of  the  lives  of  the  wisest  and  sanest, 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      199 

and  which,  in  the  case  of  Johnson,  were  specially  conspic 
uous — and  have  spoiled  his  biography. 

Woodberry's  statement,  "contact  with  the  subject  may 
have  bred  prejudice,"  is  explained  by  the  fact  that  this 
early  study  led  to  his  later  association  with  the  Poe  MSS., 
that  Griswold  had  "assumed."  Woodberry  had  been 
asked  to  edit  these  papers  and,  later,  had  edited  the  Poe- 
Chivers  correspondence. 

In  this  publication  Woodberry  made  a  dispassionate  and 
careful  study  of  all  the  known  facts  of  Poe's  life,  and  an 
intelligent  effort  to  elucidate  the  many  obscure  points  that 
had  been  controversial,  or  that  were  unknown.  Much  new 
information  was  furnished,  and  Woodberry  believed  that 
he  discovered  passages  in  Poe's  life  which  further  research 
may,  or  may  not,  uphold. 

In  his  preface  Woodberry  discussed  the  difficulties  under 
which  he  had  labored  because  of  the  many  conflicting 
statements  and  the  diverse  opinions  still  held,  and  he  gave 
the  data  on  which  he  relied  for  his  estimate: 

The  statements  of  fact  in  these  sources  are  extremely  conflicting, 
doubtful,  and  contested;  and  in  view  of  this,  as  well  as  of  the  spirit  of 
rancor  excited  in  any  discussion  of  Poe's  character,  the  author  has 
made  this,  so  far  as  was  possible,  a  documentary  biography,  has 
verified  all  facts  positively  stated  at  first  hand,  and  has  felt  obliged  to 
assign  the  authority  followed,  in  any  questionable  assertions,  in  foot 
notes.  .  .  .  Notwithstanding  the  amount  of  printed  matter  regarding 
Poe,  his  life  has  not  been  exhaustively  treated.  The  larger  portion  of 
the  following  pages  consists  of  wholly  new  information,  or  of  old  state 
ments  so  radically  corrected  as  to  become  new. 

Woodberry  called  his  work  a  "Documentary  Life," 
as  it  was  founded  on  contemporary  evidence  usually  of  a 
documentary  nature.  He  does  not  overstate  its  value  as  a 
study.  Nothing  better  has  been  offered  and  while,  in  my 
judgment,  it  is  deficient  because  of  a  failure  to  understand 
and  exhibit  the  underlying  neurosis  on  which  many  of 
Poe's  erratic  acts  were  based,  at  least  these  were  not  mag- 


200      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

nified.  Possibly  it  was  not  to  be  expected  that  Woodberry 
either  could  fully  comprehend,  or  scientifically  explain  the 
underlying  compulsions  that  were  the  basis  of  these  actions. 

Woodberry  later  revised  and  amplified  this  documen 
tary  statement,  converting  it  into  a  biography  in  which  he 
included  a  comprehensive  study  of  Poe's  writings,  and  set 
forth  his  own  conception  of  Poe's  personality. 

The  "Documentary  Biography,"  as  a  source  of  reference 
has  been  overshadowed  by  this  more  recent  and  greatly 
amplified  "Literary  Biography,"  with  which  Woodberry's 
name  is  now  so  definitely  associated.  This  is  regrettable 
because,  while  the  first  study  made  no  pretense  of  being 
other  than  a  compilation  and  a  special  research  into  the 
facts  of  Poe's  life  and  attempted  no  personal  estimate,  the 
later  work  not  only  discussed  all  Poe  wrote,  but  undertook 
to  make  a  character  study  that  would  elucidate  Poe's 
personal  equation.  Although  this  is  our  most  authoritative 
biography  and  does  possess  much  of  both  literary  and  bio 
graphical  interest,  it  is  deficient  in  certain  qualities  that 
I  believe  are  necessary  for  a  correct  delineation  of  Poe's 
puzzling  and  ill-understood  personality. 

Through  these  years  information  naturally  came  to  me,  also,  from 
other  sources,  though  I  have  never  engaged  in  personal  investigation 
since  writing  the  former  biography  ...  I  have  aimed  also  to  present 
in  the  text  the  facts  of  Poe's  career  as  they  lie  in  my  own  mind,  in  the 
notes  I  have  allowed  others  to  speak  freely,  for  praise  or  dispraise,  in 
order  that  all  may  have  a  fair  field  where  there  is  so  great  a  contro 
versy.  In  the  former  biography  I  excluded  much  and  suppressed  much 
of  what  I  thought  the  world  would  willingly  let  die;  but  this  proved  a 
fruitless  attempt  to  assist  oblivion,  and  I  have,  in  the  present  work,  at 
least  noticed  all  that  had  been  said  or  alleged  on  this  subject. 

Woodberry  further  explained  his  reason  for  writing  this 
second  biography:  4'I  have  aimed  to  make  this  a  literary 
biography ;  as  such  it  has  two  special  interests,  in  that  it  is 
a  life  led  outside  New  England,  and  that  it  embodies  much 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      201 

V*/' 
contemporaneous  literary  history  not  involved  in  any 

life  of  our  great  writers." 

Although  this  "Literary  Biography  "of  Woodberry  pos 
sessed  many  admirable  features,  it  failed  because  in  his 
"Creation"  there  was  a  malformation  of  an  important 
vital  organ.  Like  Frankenstein  who  attempted  to  create 
a  man  perfect  in  symmetry,  marvelously  articulated  with 
every  muscle,  nerve  and  organ  properly  placed,  and 
with  a  mind  so  keen  in  its  perceptions,  and  endowed 
with  such  intelligence  that  it  was  able  to  circumvent,  and, 
in  time,  to  overwhelm  its  creator,  so  does  Woodberry  re 
construct  a  Poe  who  possesses  a  brain  that  functioned 
normally  with  a  mental  capacity  unequalled  by  any  of 
his  contemporaries ;  yet  somewhere  there  was  a  fatal  flaw, 
for  none  of  the  generous  impulses  and  humanitarian  qual 
ities  animated  it.  This  Poe  construction  fails  in  recalling 
to  us  a  human  possessing  amiable  traits  and  considera 
tion  for  those  around  him.  It  may  be  asked,  as  it  was  in 
the  discussion  of  Griswold's  "Memoir,"  if  there  could  be 
found  "no  cheeriness  in  the  boy — no  casual  acts  of  kindness 
— no  adhesion  to  old  friendships — no  sympathy  with  the 
poor  and  unhappy?" 

Woodberry's  delineation  is  that  of  a  cold,  misanthropic, 
and  lonely  individual  influenced  by  none  of  the  human 
passions,  warmed  by  none  of  the  genial  qualities  neces 
sary  for  friendly  associations,  swayed  by  none  of  the 
finer  impulses  or  human  attributes  that  differentiate  us 
from  the  lower  creations — an  intellectual  being  that  lacks 
a  "heart."  Poe,  the  man,  is  ignored.  It  is  only  Poe,  the 
writer,  that  is  described.  Although  admiration  is  ex 
pressed  for  Poe's  literary  genius,  and  the  things  he  wrote 
are  fully  discussed,  nowhere  and  in  no  way  does  Wood- 
berry  exhibit  any  sympathy  with  his  subject,  or  show  any 
understanding  either  of  Poe's  abnormal  state  or  of  the 
"quid  pro  quo"  literary  world  by  which  he  was  surrounded, 


2Q2       POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 


N 

so  different  from  the  Holmes-Bryant-Longfellow  coterie 
that  dominated  New  England  thought  and  habit.  This 
was  well  organized  and  no  unharmonious  voice  could 
disturb  the  mutual  admiration  and  complacent  toleration. 
Each,  in  his  way,  possessed  many  excellencies  that  in  no 
way  interferred  with  the  honors  bestowed  upon  others: 
rather  this  very  solidarity  tended  to  uphold  each  indi 
vidual's  claim,  whether  or  not  he  quite  attained  to  the 
Heights.  No  wonder  that  Poe's  raucous  voice  breaking 
into  this  harmonious  diapason  of  self-glorification,  at 
tacking  their  literary  high-priest,  was  bitterly  resented 
and  was  explained  by  their  chief  "organ  of  expression," 
'The  Harbinger/'  —  edited  by  the  "Brook-Farm  Phalanx" 
as  Poe's  method  of  seeking  : 

Notoriety,  through  a  certain  blackguard  warfare  which  he  has 
been  waging  against  the  poets  and  newspaper  critics  of  New  England, 
and  which  it  would  have  been  more  charitable  to  impute  to  insanity. 

As  Woodberry  suggests,  Poe  "led  a  life  outside  New 
England,"  and  for  this  reason  was  a  rara  avis  worthy  of 
study.  Had  he  been  thus  environed  Woodberry  would 
have  been,  temperamentally,  better  fitted  to  have  under 
stood  him.  His  sympathetic  treatment  of  Hawthorne 
required  no  special  effort  because  the  qualities  delineated 
were  a  part  both  of  the  subject  and  of  his  biographer  and 
their  expression  was  but  an  exhibition  of  literary  skill; 
however,  transfiguration  of  the  frigid  personality  of  Emer 
son  into  the  semblance  of  an  emotional,  considerate  and 
real  human  being  makes  it  certain  that  had  Poe  remained 
in  Boston  and  had  he  become  acclimated  to  the  ozone  of 
its  literary  atmosphere,  even  the  Boston  critics  would  have 
applauded  ;  and  Woodberry  would  have  given  him  more 
sympathetic  consideration  in  his  sickness  and  destitution. 
In  spite  of  this  one  defect,  Woodberry  's  "Life  of  Poe"  re 
mains  the  best  guide  and  fairest  commentary  on  the  facts 
of  Poe's  life  and  he  is  to  be  especially  commended  because 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      203 

of  the  great  service  he  has  rendered  Poe  in  disproving 
many  of  Griswold's  false  statements,  even  though  he 
failed  to  appreciate  the  Evil  that  was  a  part  of  Poe;  or 
because  of  this  inheritance,  to  excuse  Poe's  misdeeds. 
After  all  this  is  a  matter  of  individual  opinion  and  each 
biographer  must  view  this  subject  from  his  own  mental 
horizon.  Woodberry's  own  expectation  and  ambition 
have  been  realized :  "Whatever  shall  be  the  fortune  of  this 
work,  I  am  amply  rewarded  by  the  conviction  that  I 
have,  at  least,  made  the  way  easier  for  that  ideal  bio 
grapher  who,  when  he  comes,  shall  be  perfect  in  good- 
sense,  good-will,  and  discretion/' 

Since  Woodberry's  exhaustive  study,  little  can  be  added 
to  the  known  facts  of  Poe's  life.  The  controversial  matters 
necessarily  give  wide  range  for  speculation,  but  it  is  not 
probable  that  much  more  of  material  importance  will  be 
discovered. 

The  last  biographer  that  will  be  discussed  is  Professor 
James  A.  Harrison  of  the  University  of  Virginia.  Imbued 
with  the  love  of  his  subject,  and  swayed  because  of  per 
sonal  association  and  great  sympathy,  his  biography  gives 
ample  appreciation  of  all  that  could  magnify  the  accom 
plishments  and  lend  glory  to  his  idol ;  and  that  associates 
with  his  beloved  State  of  Virginia,  and  her  Queen  City, 
Richmond,  the  name  of  her  greatest  writer.  "The  Vir 
ginia  Poe"  was  well  named,  even  if  Poe  was  born  in 
Boston. 

If  Woodberry  was  lacking  in  heart,  Harrison  is  over 
burdened  with  it.  This  hypertrophy  renders  the  biog 
raphy,  as  a  biography,  worthless  so  far  as  real  facts  and 
their  proper  relations  are  concerned.  Harrison  has  not 
properly  estimated  the  values  that  should  be  attached  to 
the  controversial  life  of  Poe,  nor  does  he  appreciate  the 
abnormal  and  darker  side  of  Poe's  life  as  dominated  by 
an  over-ruling  neurosis.  In  comparison  with  Woodberry's 


204      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

Life  it  also  errs  in  prolixity,  lack  of  systematization,  and 
clearness  of  expression.  There  is  no  serious  attempt  made 
to  clear  up  the  Griswold  charges,  and  Harrison's  state 
ments  ignore  many  phases  of  Poe's  life  that  even  the  most 
lenient  of  biographers  should  not  have  entirely  over 
looked.  These  cannot  be  minimized  except  by  a  full  ex 
planation  of  the  condition  underlying  them. 

Ancestral  details  have  been  lacking.  All  biographers 
having  been  satisfied  to  mention  the  eminent  General  Poe, 
and  respectfully  refer  to  the  legend  of  Admiral  McBride. 
Certain  phases  of  Poe's  life  and  ancestry  are  unduly 
dwelled  upon  by  both  Harrison  and  other  of  the  earlier 
biographers.  It  is  not  an  essential  matter  to  the  under 
standing  of  Poe  to  know  whether  his  ancestors  were 
"Normans,  who  came  over  with  William,  the  Con 
queror,"  or  came  from  Scandinavia;  whether  the  name 
was  originally  spelled  de  la  Poer,  de  la  Poe,  le  Poer, 
Power,  or  Poe;  whether  they  "happened"  in  Ireland  be 
cause  "Sir  Roger  Le  Poer  went  to  Ireland,  as  marshal  to 
Prince  John,  in  the  reign  of  Henry  II" ;  nor  yet  does  the 
fact  that  in  Poe's  veins  flowed  the  blood  of  "James 
McBride,  Admiral  of  the  Blue,"  in  any  way  explain  Poe's 
heritage  of  genius. 

Nothing  definite  is  known  of  the  ancestry  of  Mrs.  Poe. 
Apparently  she  contributed  her  full  share  to  the  personal 
characteristics  and  mental  qualities  of  her  son.  As  far  as 
the  father  is  concerned,  the  little  we  know  about  him 
does  not  justify  our  tracing  any  of  the  son's  genius,  or  those 
good  qualities  we  know  Edgar  Poe  possessed,  to  the  pa 
ternal  parent.  Yet,  for  some  reason  the  paternal  branch 
of  the  family  has  been  widely  and  fantastically  exploited. 

Nor  can  Ingram's  insinuation:  "he  [Poe]  was  in  some 
way  related  to  his  godfather,  who  had,  therefore,  every 
cause  to  compassionate  the  little  orphan's  condition," 
based  on  no  documentary  or  other  authoritative  evidence, 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      205 

be  true;  for  the  "bottle"  derivation,  as  an  inherited  in 
cubus,  is  too  evident. 

Griswold  must  be  held  responsible  for  yet  another 
offense  against  the  name  of  Poe.  He  was  the  first  biog 
rapher  to  append  the  full  name  "Allan"  as  a  part  of  the 
Poe  signature.  This  custom  may  be  in  accordance  with  the 
American  fashion  of  so  designating  all  who  have  attained 
distinction,  whether  by  self-adoption  or  by  their  con 
temporaries  acclamation.  At  no  time  and  under  no  cir 
cumstances  did  Poe  sign  his  name  other  than  "Edgar  A. 
Poe,"  except  on  a  single  formal  occasion,  nor  was  he  so 
addressed  by  any  of  his  associates.  Willis,  Lowell,  Graham, 
Mrs.  Whitman  and  other  of  his  contemporaries  did  not  so 
designate  him.  Neither  by  reason  of  adoption,  or  of 
treatment  received  at  the  hands  of  the  Allan  family  dur 
ing  his  life  and  since  his  death,  is  it  justifiable  to  associate 
this  name  with  that  of  Poe. 

Another  matter  that  deserves  reprehension  is  the  atti 
tude  to  Poe  held  by  many  publishers,  both  regarding 
the  illustrations  used  to  reproduce  his  conceptions,  and 
especially  as  to  the  pictures  they  insert  of  Poe. 

Usually  Poe  is  represented  with  glassy,  staring  eyes  as 
if  he  were  hallucinating  some  horrible  vision  conjured  up 
by  his  disordered  brain:  with  his  trembling  frame  sur 
mounted  either  by  a  raven  or  a  black  cat  he  cowers  in 
some  grotesque  attitude  gripped  by  horrible  fear;  or,  as  in 
the  picture  etched  by  the  Frenchman,  Manet,  now  a 
popular  reproduction  of  Poe's  characteristic  features,  he 
is  caricatured  emerging  from  a  fit  of  delirium  with  hol 
low  cheeks,  uprolled  eyes,  and  fatuous,  trembling  lips, 
muttering  some  senseless  gibberish  or  whispering  to  some 
unseen  demon — possibly  visualizing  Lauvriere's  descrip 
tion:  "a  Poe  prematurely  aged  and  debilitated,  whose 
haggard  countenance  is  stamped  by  the  imminence  of 
insanity." 


206       POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

The  portrait  of  Poe,  which  serves  as  a  frontispiece,  is 
indicative  of  a  face  matured  by  thought  and  sobered  by 
the  struggles  and  the  unhappy  contact  with  that  abnormal 
phase  of  life  which  was  the  ill-fortune  of  Poe.  As  such  I 
have  selected  it  as  an  ideal  representation  of  the  man, 
neither  grotesquely  caricatured  nor  unduly  idealized. 

Sartain,  as  an  artist,  could  speak  with  authority  as  to 
Poe's  facial  characteristics,  and  his  pronouncement  bears 
out  the  judgment  of  other  associates  and  friends : 

Poe's  face  was  handsome.  Although  his  forehead  when  seen  in 
profile  showed  a  receding  line  from  the  brow  up,  viewed  from  the  front 
it  presented  a  broad  and  noble  expanse,  very  large  at  and  above  the 
temples.  His  lips  were  thin  and  very  delicately  modelled. 

I  am  not  the  first  one  to  protest  these  "horrors"  as 
representing  the  actual  features  of  Poe.  Among  his  good 
friends  in  Philadelphia  probably  the  one  he  was  most  in 
timate  with  was  Thomas  Cottrell  Clarke,  proprietor  of 
the  "Saturday  Evening  Post,"  who  not  only  employed 
Poe  on  his  own  publications  but  associated  himself  with 
Poe  in  the  proposed  issue  of  the  "Stylus."  He  makes  the 
following  comment : 

During  his  engagement  in  my  office  I  published  a  life  of  Mr. 
Poe,  with  a  portrait  from  a  daguerreotype.  Both  the  life  and  the 
portrait  are  utterly  unlike  the  gross  caricatures  manufactured 
since  his  death;  .  .  .  the  portrait  prefixed  to  a  recent  volume  of 
Poe's  poems  bears  no  resemblance  to  the  fine  intellectual  head 
of  Poe.  Why  are  such  wrongs  perpetuated  upon  the  dead?  why 
are  they  permitted  ? 

The  Poe  reproduction  prefacing  this  section  is  from  a 
miniature  that  was  in  the  possession  of  Rosalie  Poe.  As 
such  it  is  probably  as  correct  a  likeness  as  now  exists. 

The  grotesque  and  repulsive  characterization  of  many 
of  Poe's  conceptions  such  as  Berenice,  Ligeia  and  Elea- 
nora,  that  certain  artists  adopt  when  they  attempt  to 
illustrate  Poe's  tales  and  Poems,  are  strongly  reminiscent 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      207 

of  that  "quagmire  phosphorescence"  through  which  cer 
tain  commentators  have  envisaged  some  of  Poe's  finest 
work,  and  which  they  have  denominated  "Germanic 
Horrors."  Poe's  own  explanation  of  these  "horrors"  has 
never  received  due  consideration:  "If  in  many  of  my 
productions  terror  has  been  the  thesis,  I  maintain  that 
terror  is  not  of  Germany  but  of  the  soul — that  I  have  de 
duced  this  terror  only  from  its  legitimate  sources,  and 
urged  it  only  to  its  legitimate  results." 


TO  MY  MOTHER. 


BECAUSE  I  feel  that,  in  the  Heavens  above, 

The  angels,  whispering  to  one  another, 
Can  find,  among  their  burning  terms  of  love, 

None  so  devotional  as  that  of  "  Mother," 
Therefore  by  that  dear  name  I  long  have  called  you — 

You  who  are  more  than  mother  unto  me, 
And  fill  my  heart  of  hearts,  where  Death  installed  you 

In  setting  my  Virginia's  spirit  free. 
My  mother — my  own  mother,  who  died  early, 

Was  but  the  mother  of  myself;  but  you 
Are  mother  to  the  one  I  loved  so  dearly, 

And  thus  are  dearer  than  the  mother  I  knew 
By  that  infinity  with  which  my  wife 

Was  dearer  to  my  soul  than  its  soul-life. 


SECTION  III.    POE'S  FRIEND. 

I  can  not  close  this  study  without  some  reference  to 
Poe,  the  man.  I,  too,  should  have  wished  to  write  his 
name  in  capitals.  No  figure  in  all  literary  history  has 
appealed  more  strongly  to  me  by  reason  of  his  misunder 
stood  personality  and  because  of  malignant  representation. 

Unfortunately,  it  happens  that  this  monograph  deals 
only  with  the  darker  side  of  Poe's  life.  I  have  thus  far 
related  only  what  occurred  during  periods  of  irresponsi 
bility.  I  have  not  attempted  to  give  an  account  of  his  life 
further  than  this  requirement  demanded. 

Poe  was  essentially  domestic.  He  took  pleasure  only  in 
his  small  family  circle  and,  in  the  hour  in  which  he  was 
overcome  by  his  evil  inheritance,  it  was  his  harbor  of 
refuge.  The  real  love  of  his  life  was  given  to  Mrs.  Clemm, 
his  "Dear  Muddy."  She  was  the  mother  of  the  wife  whom 
he  cherished  and  nursed,  and  she  is  the  mother-figure  that 
so  heroically  stands  forth  as  the  defender  of  his  home 
and  the  preserver  of  his  very  life — the  hard-working,  de 
voted  and  ever  faithful  mother.  Our  earliest  record  shows 
that  Poe  had  an  intense  longing  for  this  mother-love. 
Apparently  he  found  in  Mrs.  Clemm  all  the  consideration 
and  consolation  for  which  he  longed,  and  of  which  the  un 
timely  death  of  his  own  mother  had  deprived  him;  a  love 
that  was  an  absolute  necessity  for  one  of  his  abnormal 
psychology. 

Her  lineaments  show  a  face  characterized  by  gentleness 
and  placidity,  yet  remarkable  for  nobility  of  outline.  Her 
eyes  appear  penetratingly  gentle  and  kind ;  her  letters  be 
speak  much  mental  strength  and  womanly  tenderness, 
while  her  whole  life  was  one  of  such  devotion  to  her  two 


210      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

sick  and  doomed  children  as  to  justify  the  tributes  that 
her  own  friends,  as  well  as  all  of  Poe's  biographers,  paid  her. 
Willis  says : 

Winter  after  winter,  for  years,  the  most  touching  sight  to  us,  in 
this  whole  city,  has  been  that  tireless  minister  to  genius,  thinly  and  in 
sufficiently  clad,  going  from  office  to  office,  with  a  poem,  or  an  article, 
on  some  literary  subject,  to  sell — sometimes  simply  pleading  in  a 
broken  voice  that  he  was  ill,  and  begging  for  him — mentioning  nothing 
but  'that  he  was  ill,'  whatever  might  be  the  reason  for  his  writing 
nothing ;  and  never,  amid  all  her  tears  and  recitals  of  distress  suffering 
one  syllable  to  escape  her  lips  that  could  convey  a  doubt  of  him,  or 
a  complaint,  or  a  lessening  of  pride  in  his  genius  and  good  intentions. 
Her  daughter  died,  a  year  and  a  half  since,  but  she  did  not  desert 
him.  She  continued  his  ministering  angel, — living  with  him,  caring  for 
him,  guarding  him  against  exposure,  and,  when  he  was  carried  away 
by  temptation,  amid  grief  and  the  loneliness  of  feeling  unreplied  to, 
and  awoke  from  his  self-abandonment  prostrated  in  destitution  and 
suffering,  begging  for  him  still. 

If  woman's  devotion,  born  with  a  first  love,  and  fed  with  human 
passion,  hallow  its  object,  as  it  is  allowed  to  do,  what  does  not  a  devo 
tion  like  this — pure,  disinterested,  and  holy  as  the  watch  of  an  invis 
ible  spirit — say  for  him  who  inspired  it? 

Mrs.  Clemm,  in  a  letter  written  to  Mrs.  Whitman  just 
after  Poe's  departure  from  Fordham,  on  his  last  trip  to 
Richmond,  throws  further  light  on  the  relations  existing 
between  them : 

Eddy  has  been  gone  ten  days,  and  I  have  not  heard  one  word  from 
him.  Do  you  wonder  that  I  am  distracted?  I  fear  everything.  .  .  .  Oh, 
if  any  evil  has  befallen  him,  what  can  comfort  me?  The  day  after  he 
left  New  York,  I  left  Mrs.  Lewis  and  started  for  home.  I  called  on  a  rich 
friend  who  had  made  many  promises,  but  never  knew  our  situation.  I 
frankly  told  her.  She  proposed  to  me  to  leave  Eddy,  saying  he  might 
very  well  do  for  himself.  .  .  .  Any  one  to  propose  to  me  to  leave  my 
Eddy — what  a  cruel  insult!  No  one  to  console  and  comfort  him  but 
me ;  no  one  to  nurse  him  and  take  care  of  him  when  he  is  sick  and  help 
less!  Can  I  ever  forget  that  dear  sweet  face,  so  tranquil,  so  pale,  and 
those  dear  eyes  looking  at  me  so  sadly,  while  she  said,  'Darling, 
Muddy,  you  will  console  and  take  care  of  my  poor  Eddy — you  will 
never,  never  leave  him?  Promise  me,  my  dear  Muddy,  and  then  I  can 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      211 

die  in  peace/  And  /  did  promise.  And  when  I  meet  her  in  heaven,  I  can 
say,  *I  have  kept  my  promise,  my  darling.' 

Surely  she  did  keep  it,  and  wherever  Aidenn  may  be, 
there  will  these  three  be  found — together. 

For  this  sacrificing  and  faithful  woman  all  who  knew  her 
had  only  words  of  love  and  praise — save  only  one,  the 
Preacher,  who  wrote  to  Mrs.  Whitman : 

I  cannot  refrain  from  begging  you  to  be  very  careful  what  you  say 
or  write  to  Mrs.  Clemm,  who  is  not  your  friend,  nor  anybody's  friend, 
and  who  has  no  element  of  goodness  or  kindness  in  her  nature,  but 
whose  heart  and  understanding  are  full  of  malice  and  wickedness.  I 
confide  in  you  these  sentences  for  your  own  sake  only,  for  Mrs.  C.  ap^ 
pears  to  be  a  very  warm  friend  to  me.  Pray  destroy  this  note,  and  at 
least  act  cautiously,  till  I  may  justify  it  in  a  conversation  with  you. 

I  am  yours  very  sincerely, 

Rufus  W.  Griswold. 

At  one  time  she  had  extorted  admiration  even  from 
Griswold,  who  paid  her  this  tribute : 

When  once  he  sent  for  me  to  visit  him,  during  a  period  of  illness 
caused  by  protracted  and  anxious  watching  at  the  side  of  his  sick  wife, 
I  was  impressed  by  the  singular  neatness  and  the  air  of  refinement  in 
his  home.  It  was  in  a  small  house,  in  one  of  the  pleasant  and  silent 
neighborhoods  far  from  the  center  of  the  town,  and  though  slightly 
and  cheaply  furnished  everything  in  it  was  so  tasteful  and  so  fitly  dis 
posed  that  it  seemed  altogether  suitable  for  a  man  of  genius.  For  this 
and  for  most  of  the  comforts  he  enjoyed,  in  his  brightest  as  in  his 
darkest  years,  he  was  chiefly  indebted  to  his  mother-in-law,  who  loved 
him  with  the  more  than  maternal  devotion  and  constancy. 

In  the  end,  a  man  will  be  judged  by  his  home  relations 
and  his  everyday  home  life,  rather  than  by  the  armor  in 
which  he  encases  himself  for  the  fight  in  his  "Battle  of 
Life."  It  occasionally  happens  that  the  polished  exterior 
that  we  present  to  the  world  and  the  immaculate  habili 
ments  in  which  we  exhibit  ourselves  conceal  a  gnawing 
cancer  which  destroys  the  very  vitals  and  uproots  all  fam 
ily  happiness.  In  his  solitary  life  Poe  apparently  shut  out 


212      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

the  world  from  his  fireside,  yet  we  have  the  testimony  of 
occasional  visitors  as  to  the  charm  of  his  home  life : 

On  this  occasion  I  was  introduced  to  the  young  wife  of  the  poet, 
and  to  the  mother,  then  more  than  sixty  years  of  age.  She  was  a  tall, 
dignified  old  lady,  with  most  ladylike  manners,  and  her  black  dress, 
though  old  and  much  worn,  looked  really  elegant  on  her.  She  wore  a 
widow's  cap,  of  the  genuine  pattern,  and  it  suited  exquisitely  with  her 
snow-white  hair.  Her  features  were  large,  and  corresponded  with  her 
stature,  and  it  seemed  strange  how  such  a  stalwart  and  queenly 
woman  could  be  the  mother  of  her  petite  daughter.  Mrs.  Poe  looked 
very  young ;  she  had  large  black  eyes,  and  a  pearly  whiteness  of  skin 
which  was  a  perfect  pallor.  Her  pale  face,  her  brilliant  eyes,  and  her 
raven  hair  gave  her  an  unearthly  look.  One  felt  that  she  was  almost  a 
disrobed  spirit,  and  when  she  coughed  it  was  made  certain  that  she 
was  passing  away.  The  mother  seemed  hale  and  strong,  and  appeared 
to  be  almost  a  sort  of  universal  Providence  to  her  strange  children. 

The  cottage  had  an  air  of  gentility  and  taste  that  must  have  been 
lent  it  by  the  presence  of  its  inmates.  So  neat,  so  poor,  so  unfurnished 
and  yet  so  charming  a  dwelling  I  never  saw.  The  floor  of  the  kitchen 
was  white  as  wheaten  flour.  A  table,  a  chair,  and  a  little  stove  that  it 
contained  seemed  to  furnish  it  completely.  The  sitting-room  floor  was 
laid  with  check  matting ;  four  chairs,  a  light  stand,  and  a  hanging  book 
shelf  completed  the  furniture.  There  were  pretty  presentation  copies 
of  books  on  the  little  shelves,  and  the  Brownings  had  posts  of  honor  on 
the  stand.  With  quiet  exultation  Poe  drew  from  his  side-pocket  a 
letter  he  had  recently  received  from  Elizabeth  Barret  Browning.  He 
read  it  to  us. 

Again  Mrs.  Clemm  writes: 

I  always  sat  up  with  him  when  he  was  writing,  and  gave  him  a  cup 
of  hot  coffee  every  hour  or  two.  At  home  he  was  simple  and  affection 
ate  as  a  child,  and  during  all  the  years  he  lived  with  me  I  do  not 
remember  a  single  night  that  he  failed  to  come  and  kiss  his  'Mother,' 
before  going  to  bed. 

Willis  thus  judges  him  in  the  memoir  he  published  in  the 
first  volume  of  Poe's  works : 

Some  four  or  five  years  since,  when  editing  a  daily  paper  in  this 
City,  Mr.  Poe  was  employed  by  us,  for  several  months,  as  critic  and 
sub-editor.  This  was  our  first  personal  acquaintance  with  him.  He 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      213 

resided  with  his  wife  and  mother  at  Fordham,  a  few  miles  out  of  town, 
but  was  at  his  desk  in  the  office,  from  nine  in  the  morning  till  the 
evening  paper  went  to  press.  With  the  highest  admiration  for  his 
genius,  and  a  willingness  to  let  it  atone  for  more  than  ordinary  irregu 
larity,  we  were  led  by  common  report  to  expect  a  very  capricious 
attention  to  his  duties,  and  occasionally  a  scene  of  violence  and  dif 
ficulty.  Time  went  on,  however,  and  he  was  invariably  punctual  and 
industrious.  With  his  pale,  beautiful  and  intellectual  face,  as  a  re 
minder  of  what  genius  was  in  him,  it  was  impossible,  of  course,  not  to 
treat  him  always  with  deferential  courtesy,  and,  to  our  occasional 
request  that  he  would  not  probe  too  deep  into  a  criticism,  or  that  he 
would  erase  a  passage  colored  too  highly  with  his  resentments  against 
society  or  mankind,  he  readily  and  courteously  assented — far  more 
yielding  than  most  men,  we  thought,  on  points  so  excusably  sensitive. 
With  the  prospect  of  taking  the  lead  in  another  periodical,  he,  at 
last,  voluntarily  gave  up  his  employment  with  us,  and,  through  all 
this  considerable  period,  we  had  seen  none  but  one  presentment  of  the 
man — a  quiet,  patient,  industrious,  and  most  gentlemanly  person, 
commanding  the  utmost  respect  and  good  feeling  by  his  unvarying 
deportment  and  ability. 

Woodberry  quotes  Willis  as  to  his  association  with  Poe : 

He  frequently  called  on  us  afterwards  at  our  place  of  business,  and 
we  met  him  often  in  the  street, — invariably  the  same  sad-mannered, 
winning,  and  refined  gentleman  such  as  we  had  always  known  him, 
and  found  in  his  business  letters — friendly  notes — sufficient  evidence 
of  the  very  qualities  denied  to  Mr.  Poe, — humility,  willingness  to  per 
severe,  belief  in  another's  kindness,  and  capability  of  cordial  and 
grateful  friendship!  Such  he  assuredly  was  when  sane.  Such  only 
he  has  invariably  seemed  to  us,  in  all  we  personally  know  of  him, 
through  a  friendship  of  five  or  six  years.  And  so  much  easier  is  it  to 
believe  what  we  have  seen  and  known,  than  what  we  hear  of  only,  that 
we  remember  him  but  with  admiration  and  respect. 

Another  associate,  even  more  competent  to  judge  Poe, 
was  Graham.  He  thus  relates  his  own  experience : 

I  shall  never  forget  how  solicitous  of  the  happiness  of  his  wife  and 
mother-in-law  he  was  whilst  one  of  the  editors  of  'Graham's  Maga 
zine'  ;  his  whole  effort  seemed  to  be  to  procure  the  comfort  and  welfare 
of  his  home.  Except  for  their  happiness,  and  the  natural  ambition  of 
having  a  magazine  of  his  own,  I  never  heard  him  deplore  the  want  of 


214      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

wealth.  The  truth  is,  he  cared  little  for  money,  and  knew  less  of  its 
value,  for  he  seemed  to  have  no  personal  expenses.  What  he  received 
from  me,  in  regular  monthly  installments,  went  directly  into  the 
hands  of  his  mother-in-law  for  family  comforts,  and  twice  only  I  re 
member  his  purchasing  some  rather  expensive  luxuries  for  his  house, 
and  then  he  was  nervous  to  the  degree  of  misery  until  he  had,  by 
extra  articles,  covered  what  he  considered  an  imprudent  indebtedness. 
His  love  for  his  wife  was  a  sort  of  rapturous  worship  of  the  spirit  of 
beauty  which  he  felt  was  fading  before  his  eyes.  I  have  seen  him  hov 
ering  around  her  when  she  was  ill,  with  all  the  fond  fear  and  the  tender 
anxiety  of  a  mother  for  her  first-born,  her  slightest  cough  causing  in 
him  a  shudder,  a  heart-chill  that  was  visible.  I  rode  out,  one  summer 
evening  with  them,  and  the  remembrance  of  his  watchful  eyes  eagerly 
bent  on  the  slightest  change  of  hue  in  that  loved  face  haunts  me 
yet  as  the  memory  of  a  sad  strain.  It  was  the  hourly  anticipation  of 
her  loss  that  made  him  a  sad  and  thoughtful  man,  and  lent  a  mourn 
ful  melody  to  his  undying  song. 

There  was  a  well-known  *  'bibliopole"  who  was  a  fellow 
guest  with  Poe  for  several  months  during  his  first  residence 
in  New  York.  His  name  was  Gowans,  noted  for  his  acquisi 
tive  book  collecting — a  "Ballinger"  who  bought  but  never 
sold. 

Harrison  quotes  him  as  follows : 

For  eight  months  or  more  'one  house  contained  us,  as  one  table 
fed.'  During  this  time  I  saw  much  of  him  and  had  an  opportunity  of 
conversing  with  him  often,  and  I  must  say  that  I  never  saw  him  the 
least  affected  by  liquor,  nor  even  descend  to  any  known  vice,  while  he 
was  one  of  the  most  courteous,  gentlemanly  and  intelligent  com 
panions  I  have  met  with  during  my  journeyings  and  haltings  through 
divers  divisions  of  the  globe. 

Captain  Mayne  Reid  is  another  writer  who  came  to  the 
defense  of  Poe.  In  "Onward"  for  April,  1869,  appeared 
his  article:  "A  Dead  Man  Defended,"  and  he  thus  de 
scribes  the  intimate  family  life  of  the  Poes : 

Poe  I  have  known  for  a  whole  month  closeted  in  his  house 
all  the  time  hard  at  work  with  his  pen,  poorly  paid,  and  hard 
driven  to  keep  the  wolf  from  his  slightly  fastened  door;  intruded 
on  only  by  a  few  select  friends,  who  always  found  him,  what  they 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      215 

knew  him  to  be,  a  generous  host,  an  affectionate  son-in-law  and 
husband, — in  short  a  respectable  gentleman.  ...  In  the  list  of 
literary  men  there  has  been  no  such  spiteful  biographer  as  Rufus 
Griswold,  and  never  such  a  victim  of  posthumous  spite  as  poor 
Edgar  Poe.  .  .  .  [Mrs.  Poe  was]  a  lady  angelically  beautiful  in 
person,  and  not  less  beautiful  in  spirit.  No  one  who  remembers 
that  dark-eyed,  dark-haired  daughter  of  Virginia, — her  own 
name, — her  grace,  her  facial  beauty,  her  demeanor  so  modest  as 
to  be  remarkable;  no  one  who  has  ever  spent  an  hour  in  her 
company,  but  will  endorse  what  I  have  said.  I  remember  how 
we,  the  friends  of  the  poet,  used  to  talk  of  her  high  qualities,  and 
when  we  talked  of  her  beauty,  I  well  knew  that  the  rose-tint  upon 
her  cheek  was  too  bright,  too  pure,  to  be  of  the  earth.  .  .  .  Besides 
the  poet  and  his  interesting  wife,  there  was  another  dweller. 
It  (sic)  was  a  woman  of  middle  age  and  almost  masculine  aspect. 
She  had  the  size  and  figure  of  a  man,  with  a  countenance  that,  at 
first  sight,  seemed  scarce  feminine.  A  stranger  would  have  been 
incredulous,  surprised,  as  I  was,  when  introduced  to  her  as  the 
mother  of  that  angelic  creature  who  had  accepted  Edgar  Poe  as 
the  partner  of  her  life.  She  was  the  ever  vigilant  guardian  of  the 
house,  watching  it  against  the  ever  silent  but  continuous  sap  of 
necessity,  that  appeared  every  day  to  be  approaching  closer  and 
nearer.  She  was  the  sole  servant,  keeping  everything  clean;  the 
sole  messenger,  doing  the  errands,  making  pilgrimages  between 
the  poet  and  the  publishers,  frequently  bringing  back  such  chilling 
responses  as  'the  article  not  accepted'  or  'the  cheque  not  to  be 
given  until  such  and  such  a  date' — often  too  late  for  his  neces 
sities. 

In  the  "Hearth  and  Home"  for  1870,  Amanda  B.Harris, 
a  friend  of  the  Poe  family,  wrote : 

It  was  one  of  the  saddest  things  in  his  sad  history  that  the  two 
dearest  to  him  were  sharers  of  his  hardships  and  sufferings — his 
beautiful  young  wife  and  her  devoted  mother.  He  married  his 
cousin,  who  was  brought  up  in  the  South,  and  was  as  unused  to 
toil  as  she  was  unfit  for  it.  She  hardly  looked  more  than  fourteen, 
fair,  soft,  graceful  and  girlish.  Every  one  who  saw  her  was  won  by 
her.  Poe  was  very  proud  and  very  fond  of  her,  and  used  to  delight 
in  the  round,  childlike  face  and  plump  little  figure,  which  he  con 
trasted  with  himself,  so  thin  and  half  melancholy  looking,  and 


216      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

she  in  turn  idolized  him.  She  had  a  voice  of  wonderful  sweetness, 
and  was  an  exquisite  singer,  and  in  their  more  prosperous  days, 
when  they  were  living  in  a  pretty  rose-covered  cottage  on  the 
outskirts  of  Philadelphia,  she  had  her  harp  and  piano.  ...  It 
was  during  this  time  that  Mrs.  Poe,  while  singing  one  evening, 
ruptured  a  blood-vessel  and  after  that  she  suffered  a  hundred 
deaths.  She  could  not  bear  the  slightest  exposure,  and  needed 
the  utmost  care;  and  all  those  conveniences  as  to  apartment  and 
surroundings  which  are  so  important  in  the  case  of  an  invalid, 
were  almost  matters  of  life  and  death  to  her.  And  yet  the  room 
where  she  lay  for  weeks,  hardly  able  to  breathe,  except  as  she 
was  fanned,  was  a  little  place  with  the  ceiling  so  low  over  the 
narrow  bed  that  her  head  almost  touched  it.  But  no  one  dared 
to  speak,  Mr.  Poe  was  so  sensitive  and  irritable;  'quick  as  steel 
and  flint,'  said  one  who  knew  him  in  those  days.  And  he  would 
not  allow  a  word  about  the  danger  of  her  dying,  the  mention  of 
it  drove  him  wild.  ...  So  they  lived,  bound  together  in  tender 
bonds  of  love  and  sorrow, — their  love  making  their  lot  more 
tolerable — the  three  clinging  to  each  other;  and  the  mother  was 
the  good  angel  who  strove  to  shield  the  poet  and  to  save  him. 
This  way  their  lives  went  on  in  those  dark  days;  he  trying  des 
perately  at  times  to  earn  money,  writing  a  little,  and  fitfully 
fighting  against  himself,  sustained  only  by  their  solace  and 
sympathy,  and  by  the  helping  hand  of  the  self-sacrificing  mother, 
who  loved  him  as  if  he  had  been,  indeed,  her  own  son. 

Mr.  S.  D.  Lewis,  a  New  York  lawyer,  the  husband  of 
Sarah  Ann  Lewis,  gave  the  following  testimony : 

And  now,  as  to  Mr.  Poe,  he  was  one  of  the  most  affectionate, 
kind-hearted  men  I  ever  knew.  I  never  witnessed  so  much  tender 
affection  and  devoted  love  as  existed  in  that  family  of  three 
persons. 

His  dear  Virginia,  after  her  death,  was  his  'Lost  Lenore.'  I 
have  spent  weeks  in  the  closest  intimacy  with  Mr.  Poe,  and  I 
never  saw  him  drink  a  drop  of  liquor,  wine  or  beer,  in  my  life,  and 
never  saw  him  under  the  slightest  influence  of  any  stimulants 
whatever.  He  was,  in  truth,  a  most  abstemious  and  exemplary 
man.  But  I  learned  from  Mrs.  Clemm  that  if,  on  the  importunity 
of  a  convivial  friend,  he  took  a  single  glass,  even  wine,  it  suddenly 
flashed  through  his  nervous  system  and  excitable  brain,  and  that 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      217 

he  was  no  longer  himself,  or  responsible  for  his  acts.  His  biog 
raphers  have  not  done  his  virtues  or  his  genius  justice;  and  to  pro 
duce  a  startling  effect,  by  contrast,  have  magnified  his  errors  and 
attributed  to  him  faults  which  he  never  had.  He  was  always,  in 
my  presence,  the  polished  gentleman,  the  profound  scholar,  the 
true  critic,  and  the  inspired  oracular  poet ;  dreaming  and  spiritual ; 
lofty  but  sad. 

Mrs.  Clemm  bears  the  following  testimony : 
Eddie  was  domestic  in  all  his  habits,  seldom  leaving  home  for  an 
hour  unless  his  darling  Virginia,  or  myself,  were  with  him.  He  was 
truly  an  affectionate,  kind  husband,  and  a  devoted  son  to  me.  He  was 
impulsive,  generous,  affectionate,  and  noble.  His  tastes  were  very 
simple,  and  his  admiration  for  all  that  was  good  and  beautiful  was 
very  great.  We  three  lived  for  each  other. 

And  yet  Griswold,  in  the  preface  to  Poe's  collected 
works  wrote : 

There  seemed  to  him  no  moral  susceptibility;  and,  what  was  more 
remarkable  in  a  proud  nature,  little  or  nothing  of  the  true  point  of 
honor.  He  had,  to  a  morbid  excess,  that  desire  to  rise  which  is  vulgarly 
called  ambition,  but  no  wish  for  the  esteem  or  the  love  of  his  species ; 
only  the  hard  wish  to  succeed — not  shine,  not  serve — succeed,  that  he 
might  have  the  right  to  despise  the  world  which  galled  his  self- 
conceit. 

We  have,  finally,  Poe's  own  estimate  of  himself,  written 
to  Mrs.  Whitman. 

With  the  exception  of  occasional  follies  and  excesses  which  I  bit 
terly  lament  but  to  which  I  have  been  driven  by  intolerable  sorrow, 
and  which  are  hourly  committed  by  others  without  attracting  any 
notice  whatever — I  can  call  to  mind  no  act  of  my  life  which  would 
bring  a  blush  to  my  cheeks — or  to  yours. 

Poe  was  a  Solitary.  Apparently  there  was  no  one,  outside 
his  family  group,  with  whom  at  any  time  he  became 
intimate.  In  some  of  his  letters  he  seemdto  long  for  friend 
ship  and,  especially  in  one  that  he  wrote  to  Lowell/he  ex 
pressed  himself  with  unusual  freedom,  and  without  that 
veil  of  mental  reserve  through  which  he  allowed  the  world 
to  view  and  misjudge  him : 


218      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

I  can  feel  for  the  'constitutional  indolence'  of  which  you  complain 
— for  it  is  one  of  my  own  besetting  sins.  I  am  excessively  slothful  and 
wonderfully  industrious — by  fits.  There  are  epochs  when  any  kind  of 
mental  exertion  is  torture  and  when  nothing  yields  me  pleasure  but 
solitary  communion  'with  the  mountains  and  the  woods' — the  'altars' 
of  Byron.  I  have  thus  rambled  and  dreamed  away  whole  months,  and 
awake,  at  last,  to  a  sort  of  mania  of  composition. 

I  am  not  ambitious,  except  negatively.  I  now  and  then  feel  stirred 
up  to  excel  a  fool,  merely  because  I  hate  to  let  a  fool  imagine  he  can 
excel  me. 

I  live  continually  in  a  reverie  of  the  future;  I  have  no  faith  in 
human  perfectability. 

I  think  that  human  exertion  will  have  no  appreciable  effect  on 
humanity.  Man  is  now  only  more  active — not  more  happy — not  more 
wise,  than  he  was  6000  years  ago.  .  .  .  You  speak  of  'an  estimate  of 
my  life,'  and  from  what  I  have  already  said,  you  will  see  that  I  have 
none  to  give. 

I  have  been  too  conscious  of  the  mutability  and  evanescence  of 
temporal  things  to  give  any  continuous  effort  to  anything — to  be  con 
sistent  in  anything. 

My  life  has  been  a  whim — an  impulse — a  passion — a  longing  for 
solitude — a  scorn  of  all  things  present  in  an  earnest  desire  for  the 
future. 

I  am  profoundly  excited  by  music  and  by  some  poems — those  of 
Tennyson  especially — whom  with  Keats,  Shelley,  Coleridge  occasion 
ally,  and  a  few  others  of  like  thought  and  expression,  I  regard  as  the 
sole  poets. 

Poe's  was  a  royal  mentality,  and  we  may  be  sure  that  he 
fully  realized  that  he  was  without  a  peer  among  those  with 
whom  he  associated.  Who  else  would  dare  write:  "Mr. 
Bryant  is  not  all  fool.  Mr.  Willis  is  not  quite  an  ass.  Mr. 
Longfellow  will  steal,  but,  perhaps  he  cannot  help  it,  and  it 
must  not  be  denied  that  nil  tetegit  quod  non  ornavit." 

To  him  who  wears  the  crown,  possibly  such  language  is 
permissible.  Yet  it  is  unfortunate  that  Poe's  life  could  not 
have  been  enriched  by  a  few  of  those  literary  friendships 
that  have  so  glorified  the  lives  of  such  men  as  Johnson, 
Thackeray,  Goldsmith  and  Lamb. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      219 

There  was  one  to  whom  he  warmed  and,  under  more 
propitious  circumstances,  there  might  have  ripened  such 
mutual  appreciation  as  to  have  indissolubly  linked  their 
names — no  matter  how  wide  the  literary  gap  that  separ 
ated  them. 

Although  Poe's  letters  to  Lowell  are  marked  by  an  un 
usual  and  personal  note  of  cordial  friendship,  and  Lowell 
apparently  reciprocated,  they  never  met  except  on  the 
one  unfortunate  occasion,  the  circumstances  of  which 
were  such  as  to  cause  a  serious  and  permanent  alienation. 
Yet  their  correspondence  seemed  to  justify  the  olive 
branch  Poe  held  out : 

I  hope  ere  long  to  have  the  pleasure  of  conversing  with  you  per 
sonally.  There  is  no  man  living  with  whom  I  have  so  much  desire  to 
become  acquainted.  How  much  I  would  like  to  interchange  opinions 
with  you  on  poems  and  poets  in  general !  I  fancy  that  we  should  agree, 
usually,  in  results,  while  differing  frequently  about  principles.  The  day 
may  come  when  we  can  discuss  everything  at  leisure  and  in  person. 

There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that,  had  Lowell  recip 
rocated,  a  great  literary  friendship  might  have  resulted,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  the  two  men  differed  as  greatly  in 
their  literary  capacities  as  they  did  in  their  material 
fortunes. 

Who  of  the  present  generation  would  have  connected 
the  name  of  Poe  the  maligned — the  man  whose  name  be 
came  a  synonym  for  all  that  is  held  to  be  repulsive, 
who  "succeeded  in  attracting  and  combining  in  his  own 
person  all  the  floating  vices  which  genius  had  hitherto 
shown  itself  capable  of  grasping  in  its  widest  and  most 
eccentric  orbit"  ;"a  man  who  becamean  object  of  charity" ; 
"the  delirious  drunken  pauper  of  a  common  hospital"; 
whose  memory  and  name  became  a  byword ;  in  whose  own 
works  there  was  embedded  by  his  unmoral  biographer  the 
story  of  a  "career  full  of  instruction  and  warning,  as  it  has 
always  been  made  a  portion  of  the  penalty  of  wrong  that 


220      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

its  anatomy  should  be  displayed  for  the  common  study 
and  advantage";  pilloried  in  his  life  and  crucified  in  his 
death — with  that  of  Lowell  the  Ambassador,  the  Professor 
of  belles-lettres,  the  literary  arbiter  of  the  late  nineteenth 
century. 

Poe's  name  will  live  in  spite  of  his  critics  and  of  evil  re 
ports.  He  has  left  works  that  neither  time  nor  age  nor 
changing  fashions  nor  new  standards  can  cast  into  ob 
livion.  They  will  constitute  a  "monument  more  lasting  than 
brass,"  and  with  Horace  he  can  sing: 

Quod  si  me  lyricis  vatibus  inserts 
Sublimi  feriam  sidere  vertice 

for  their  dreams  have  been  realized  and  they  "have 
reached  the  stars  with  the  high-carried  head." 

None  can  begrudge  Lowell  his  niche  in  the  temple  of 
fame.  Although  in  the  coming  years  but  few  will  listen  to 
his  "Conversations  on  Some  of  the  Old  Poets,"  or  look 
with  him  through  his  "Study  Windows,"  or  accompany 
him  on  his  "Fireside  Travels,"  yet  shall  he  have  the  satis 
faction  of  knowing  that,  so  far  as  this  world  and  its  judg 
ments  are  concerned,  his  reputation  remains  untarnished ; 
and  that  no  word  of  scandal  ever  has  been  uttered  which 
could  in  the  slightest  besmirch  his  good  name. 

It  is  equally  certain,  although  for  some  good  New 
England  reason  Lowell  assumed  the  throne  left  vacant 
by  the  death  of  Longfellow,  that  generations  to  come 
will  know  him  not;  and  that  his  name,  good  or  bad, 
will  perish  from  the  memory  of  man,  unless  it  be  recalled 
as  a  contributor  to  the  curiosities  of  literature,  when  the 
"Biglow  Papers"  are  referred  to,  or  "A  Fable  for  Critics"  is 
mentioned  because  it  contains  an  allusion  to  Poe. 

Lowell's  name  may  be  carried  to  future  generations  be 
cause  he  almost  became  Poe's  friend. 

Did  one  pay  the  price  because  he  was  the  child  of  genius, 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      221 

while  the  other  inherited  the  earth  because  he  lacked  this 
divine  gift?  Who  rightly  may  be  judged  the  more  fortu 
nate?  For  of  the  mediocre  who  strive,  struggle,  die  and  are 
forgotten,  the  world  holds  no  record. 

Our  beloved  Autocrat,  more  wonderfully  than  I  know 
of  elsewhere, has  described  this  "Race  of  Life." 

Commencement  day  always  reminds  me  of  the  start  for  the 
'Derby'  when  the  beautiful  three-year  olds  of  the  season  are  brought 
up  for  the  trial.  .  .  .  But  this  is  the  start  and  here  they  are,  coats 
bright  as  silk,  and  manes  smooth  as  eau  lustrale  can  make  them.  Some 
of  the  best  are  pranced  around,  a  few  minutes  each,  to  show  their 
paces.  .  .  .  Do  they  really  think  those  little  thin  legs  can  do  anything 
in  such  a  slashing  sweepstakes  as  is  coming  off  in  the  next  forty  years? 
Oh,  this  terrible  gift  of  second-sight  that  comes  to  some  of  us  when  we 
begin  to  look  through  the  silvered  rings  of  the  arcus  senilis!  Ten  years 
gone.  First  turn  in  the  race.  A  few  broken  down;  two  or  three  bolted. 
Cassock,  a  black  colt,  seems  to  be  ahead  of  the  rest;  those  black  colts 
commonly  get  the  start,  I  have  noticed,  of  the  others  in  the  first  quar 
ter.  Meteor  has  pulled  up. 

Twenty  years.  Cassock  has  dropped  from  the  front,  and  Judex,  an 
iron-gray,  has  the  lead.  But  look!  how  they  have  thinned  out.  Down 
flat, — five, — six,  how  many  ?  They  lie  still  enough !  They  will  not  get  up 
again  in  this  race,  be  very  sure ! 

Thirty  years.  Dives,  bright  sorrel,  ridden  by  the  fellow  in  the  yel 
low  jacket,  begins  to  make  play  fast.  But  who  is  that  other  one  that 
has  been  lengthening  his  stride  and  now  shows  close  up  to  the  front  ? 
Don't  you  remember  the  quiet  brown  colt  Asteroid  with  the  star  in  his 
forehead?  The  black  colt,  as  we  used  to  call  him,  is  in  the  background 
taking  it  easily  in  a  gentle  trot. 

Forty  years.  More  dropping  off  but  much  as  before. 

Fifty  years.  Race  over.  All  that  are  on  the  course  are  coming  in  at 
a  walk ;  no  more  running.  Who  is  ahead  ?  What !  and  the  winning  post  a 
slab  of  white  or  gray  stone  standing  out  from  that  turf  where  there  is 
no  more  jockying  or  straining  for  victory. 

Although  Poe  is  now  recognized  as  our  literary  primate, 
he  has  been  denied  official  recognition ;  moreover  he  has 
been  reluctantly  admitted  to  our  metropolitan  Hall  of 
Fame,  and  those  who  should  have  gloried  in  the  great 


222      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

literary  reputation  he  has  given  to  us,  and  who  should  have 
welcomed  him  as  a  peer,  coldly  declined  to  participate 
when  they  were  asked  to  do  him  honor. 

Boston,  with  its  New  England  clientele,  never  bowed 
the  knee.  To  them  it  seemed  incomprehensible  that  one 
could  have  arisen  who  did  not  belong  to  their  local  cult, 
strangely  ignoring  the  fact  that  in  spite  of  their  ostra 
cism  Poe  really  was  Boston  born.  Woodberry  had  reason 
to  congratulate  himself  on  his  liberality  of  spirit  in  recog 
nizing  a  "literary  life  led  outside  New  England." 

Years  ago  the  acid  test  was  applied.  When,  through  the 
efforts  of  old  friends  and  of  the  school  children  of  Balti 
more,  a  public  subscription  was  raised  for  the  purpose  of 
erecting  a  "slab  of  stone"  to  fittingly  mark  the  rest  ing-place 
of  Poe's  body — there  he  is  not — they  asked  those  great 
men  of  Boston  who  had  been  Poe's  contemporaries,  and 
who  necessarily  recognized  his  literary  eminence,  to  join  in 
commemorating  his  memory.  These  invitations  were  either 
ignored  or  declined. 

Lowell,  Poe's  old  friend  and  admirer,  in  a  four-line  letter, 
"regretted  very  much  that  it  will  be  quite  impossible  for 
me  to  be  present."  Bryant,  in  a  note  equally  brief,  returned 
"thanks  for  the  obliging  invitation."  Mr.  Whittier:  "As  a 
matter  of  principle,  I  do  not  favor  ostentatious  monu 
ments"  (only  a  few  hundred  dollars  had  been  raised  by 
these  poor  children  of  Baltimore) .  Dr.  Holmes,  in  his  letter 
of  declination,  feelingly  referred  to  Poe's  sins  of  commis 
sion:  "The  hearts  of  all  who  reverence  the  inspiration  of 
genius,  who  can  look  tenderly  upon  the  infirmities  too  often 
attending  it,  who  can  feel  for  its  misfortunes,  will  sym 
pathize  with  you,  as  you  gather  around  the  resting  place  of 
all  that  was  mortal  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe."  If  Holmes, 
usually  so  generous  and  warm-hearted,  could  thus  coldly 
respond,  to  whom  could  we  then  turn  ?  Surely  there  was  one 
who  would  exhibit  some  tenderness  for  the  memory  of  a 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      223 

contemporary  he  most  certainly  admired,  however  widely 
apart  their  orbits  ranged.  But  Longfellow's  response  was 
the  briefest  of  all ;  no  kindly  memory  nor  literary  apprecia 
tion  roused  the  slightest  spark  of  his  sympathy.  To  him 
these  two  lines : 

The  fever  called  living 

Is  conquered  at  last. 

seemed  the  fitting  Epitaph  and  End. 

And  Tennyson,  the  Tennyson  Poe  so  admired, — would 
that  I  did  not  have  to  record  it! — wrote: 

I  have  long  been  acquainted  with  Poe's  works  and  am  an  admirer 
of  them.  I  am  obliged  to  you  for  your  expressions  about  myself,  and 
your  promise  of  sending  me  the  design  for  the  poet's  monument,  and 
beg  you  to  believe  me,  yours  very  truly. 

None  of  these,  by  the  slightest  word  or  token,  gave  evi 
dence  of  sympathetic  interest  or  of  respect  for  the  memory 
of  Poe :  not  one  of  them  went  beyond  the  limit  of  strict 
etiquette  in  their  formal  answers. 

This  indifference  cannot  be  accounted  for  by  sectional 
jealousies  or  by  local  prejudices.  Many  years  before  our 
country  again  had  become  one;  the  ties  binding  it  had 
grown  into  indissoluble  bonds  that  have  made  us  forget 
there  ever  was  a  line  of  cleavage.  Holmes  once  used 
and  explained  the  word  "polarized"  in  a  way  to  account 
for  this  attitude. 

Continuity  of  contemptuous  memory  and  biography  had 
overcome  and  "polarized"  all  feeling  for  the  human  side  of 
Poe,  and  had  obliterated  all  thought  of  him,  except  the  one 
that  was  bitter  and  that  bore  no  relation  to  his  genius. 
Coming  generations  will  become  de-polarized. 

Had  it  been  Lowell,  and  not  Poe,  whose  name  was  to  have 
been  celebrated  by  a  fitting  observance  of  his  memorable 
qualities, — not  of  the  things  he  wrote, — what  an  outpour 
ing  of  commemorative  odes  would  have  honored  alike  the 
subject  and  the  singers ! 


224      POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY 

I  do  not  believe  that  I  am  peculiar  in  the  great  love  that 
I  hold  for  the  names  of  certain  writers — not  necessarily 
because  they  wrote  marvelous  things,  but  because  they 
are  men  who  appeal  to  my  heart. 

It  was  Thackeray  who  said: 

If  Steele  is  not  our  friend  he  is  nothing.  He  is  by  no  means  the  most 
brilliant  of  wits  or  the  deepest  of  thinkers,  but  he  is  our  friend ;  we  love 
him  as  children  love,  with  an  A  because  he  is  amiable.  I  own  to  liking 
Dick  Steele  the  Man  and  Dick  Steele  the  Author  much  better  than 
much  better  men  and  much  better  authors. 

How  I  would  have  loved  to  go  a-fishing  with  old  Isaac, 
and  have  had  him  show  me  "that  very  chub  with  a  white 
spot  on  his  tail."  What  a  feast  I  could  have  had  at  the 
Mitre,  not  because  of  Johnson's  turgid  argumentations 
"for  effect,"  but  rejoicing  in  Goldsmith's  whimsicalities 
and  stuttered  paradoxes ;  and  the  touch  of  his  honest  hand 
would  have  thrilled  me  in  spite  of  his  absurd  "bloom- 
colored  coat"  and  his  homely  snub-nosed  face  seared  by 
the  scars  of  smallpox. 

Or  could  I  have  met,  only  one  time,  the  big-hearted 
Thackeray  in  one  of  his  hours  of  relaxation,  possibly  on  one 
of  his  occasional  meetings  with  "Old  Fitz,"  indulging  in 
persiflage  and  uproarious  boyish  laughter — Thackeray,  the 
lovable,  who  never  stooped  to,  nor  tolerated,  an  ignoble 
action,  and  who  satirized  all  that  was  false,  mean,  and  dis 
honest  ;  that  poor  Thackeray  who  so  patiently  bore  the  one 
great  and  unbearable  affliction  in  his  attempt  to  mother 
his  motherless  girls. 

Would  not  one  have  enjoyed  a  day  at  Silverado  with 
Louis  Stevenson,  that  patient  sufferer  who  so  pathetically 
and  tenaciously  fought  for  life — not  because  he  feared 
death,  but  because  life  held  much  joy?  We  cannot  even 
look  at  the  crags  of  Mount  Saint  Helena,  which  for  a 
time  held  and  finally  restored  him,  without  a  quickening 
of  the  pulse-beat  and  a  tightening  of  the  heart-strings. 


POE:  A  PSYCHOPATHIC  STUDY      225 

Among  such  "Royal  and  Noble  Authors"  as  these,  Poe 
would  not  have  been  the  least  of  those  I  loved.  In  his  hours 
of  sorrow  and  depression,  when  he  shunned  the  world  and 
sought  seclusion  in  the  little  cottage  at  Fordham,  now  a 
shrine  to  his  memory,  I  could  have  kept  him  silent  com 
pany,  and  in  my  own  poor  way  have  ministered  to  his 
necessities — possibly  have  given  him  aid  in  his  affliction ; 
or  I  would  have  accompanied  him  on  one  of  his  solitary 
rambles  to  High  Bridge,  bearing  with  him  his  load  of  gloom 
and  wretchedness.  When  his  mood  changed  and  inspiration 
lighted  his  mobile  face,  I  would  have  rejoiced  in  his  low- 
toned  voice  repeating  some  favorite  poem ;  or  when  super 
natural  themes  employed  his  facile  tongue,  I  would  have 
sympathized  with  him  while  he  dwelled  on  those  wonders 
of  nature  that  so  completely  occupied  his  later  years;  and, 
in  the  words  of  his  beloved  Tennyson,  I  would  have  at 
tempted  with  him  to  seek  some  solution  of  the  Ultimate, 

And  reach  the  law  within  the  law. 


A  MONOLOGUE  CONCERNING 
THE  DEAD 


BURTON'S   GENTLEMAN'S   MAGAZINE. 
THE     CONVERSATION     OF     EIROS     AND     CHARMION. 


T     K  I)  G  A  R      A.      *OE. 


EIROS.  Why  do  you  call  me  Eiros  t 

CHARMIOK.  So  henceforward  will  you  always  be  called.  You  must  forget,  too,  my  earthly  name, 
and  speak  to  me  as  Charmion. 

EIROS.  This  is  indeed  no  dream ! 

CHARHIOX.  Dreams  are  with  us  no  more — but  of  these  mysteries  anon.  I  rejoice  to  see  you 
looking  life-like  and  rational.  The  film  of  the  shadow  has  already  passed  from  offyoui  eyes.  Be 
of  heart,  and  fear  nothing.  Your  allotted  days  of  stupor  have  expired  ;  and,  to-morrow,  I  will  my 
self  induct  you  into  the  full  joys  and  wonders  of  your  novel  existence. 

EiRes.  True — I  feel  no  stupor — none  at  all.  The  wild  sickness  and  the  terrible  darkness  have 
left  me,  and  I  hear  no  longer  that  mad,  rushing,  horrible  sound,  like  the  "  voice  of  many  waters." 
Yet  my  senses  are  bewildered,  Charmion,  with  the  keenness  of  their  perception  of  the  new. 

CHARMIOH.  A  few  days  will  remove  all  this — but  I  fully  understand  you,  and  feel  for  you.  It 
is  now  ten  earthly  years  since  I  underwent  what  you  undergo— yet  the  remembrance  of  It  hangs  by 
me  still.  You  have  now  suffered  all  of  pain,  however,  which  you  will  suffer  in  Aidenn. 

EIROS.  In  Aidenn  1 

CHARMIOW.  In  Aidenn. 

EIROS.  Oh  God  ! — pity  me,  Charmion ! — I  am  overburthened  with  the  majesty  of  all  thing* — 
of  the  unknown  now  known — of  the  speculative  Future  merged  hi  the  august  and  certain  Present 

CHARMIOH.  Grapple  not  now  with  such  thoughts.  To-morrow  we  will  speak  of  this.  Your 
mind  wavers,  and  its  agitation  will  find  relief  in  the  exercise  of  simple  memories.  Look  not  around, 
nor  forward — but  back.  I  am  burning  with  anxiety  to  hear  the  details  of  that  stupendous  event 
which  threw  you  among  us.  Tell  me  of  it.  Let  us  converse  of  familiar  things,  in  the  old  familiar 
language  of  the  world  which  has  so  fearfully  perished. 

EIROS.  Most  fearfully,  fearfully  ! — this  is  indeed  no  dream. 

CHARMION.  Dreams  are  no  more.     Was  I  much  mourned,  my  Eiros  t 

EIROS.  Mourned,  Charmion  ? — oh  deeply.  To  that  last  hour  of  all  there  hung  a  cloud  of  intense 
gloom  and  devout  sorrow  over  your  household. 

CHARMIOK.  And  that  last  hour — speak  of  it.  Remember  that,  beyond  the  naked  fact  of  the 
catastrophe  itself,  I  know  nothing.  When,  coming  out  from  among  mankind,  I  passed  into  Night 
through  the  Grave— at  that  period,  if  I  remember  aiight,  the  calamity  which  overwhelmed  you  was 
utterly  unanticipated.  But,  indeed,  I  knew  little  of  the  speculative  philosophy  of  the  day. 

EIROS.  The  individual  calamity  was,  as  you  say, •  entirely  unanticipated;  but  analogous  mis 
fortunes  had  been  long  a  subject  of  discussion  with  astronomers.  I  need  scarce  tell  you,  my  friend, 
that,  even  when  you  left  us,  men  had  agreed  to  understand  those  passages  hi  the  most  holy  writings 
which  speak  of  the  final  destruction  of  all  things  by  fire,  as  having  reference  to  the  orb  of  the  earth 
alone.  But  in  regard  to  the  immediate  agency  of  the  ruin,  speculation  had  been  at  fault  from  that 
epoch  in  astronomical  knowledge  in  which  the  comets  were  divested  of  the  terrors  of  flame.  The 
very  moderate  density  of  these  bodies  had  been  well  established.  They  had  been  observed  to  pass 
among  the  satellites  of  Jupiter,  without  bringing  about  any  sensible  alteration  either  in  the  masses 
or  in  the  orbits  of  these  secondary  planets.  We  had  long  regarded  the  wanderers  as  vapory  creations 
of  inconceivable  tenuity,  and  as  altogether  incapable  of  doing  injury  to  our  substantial  globe,  even  in 
the  event  of  contact.  But  contact  was  not  in  any  degree  dreaded  ;  for  the  elements  of  all  the  comets 
were  accurately  known.  That  among  them  we  should  look  for  the  agency  of  the  threatened  fiery 
destruction  had  been  for  many  years  considered  an  inadmissible  idea.  But  wonders  and  wild  fancies 
had  been,  of  late  days,  strangely  rife  among  mankind ;  and,  although  it  was  only  with  a  few  of  the 
ignorant  that  actual  apprehension  prevailed  upon  the  announcement  by  astronomers  of  a  new  comet, 
yet  this  announcement  was  generally  received  with  I  know  not  what  of  agitation  and  mistrust  ' 

The  elements  of  the  strange  oib  were  immediately  calculated,  and  it  was  at  once  conceded  by  all 
observers  that  its  path,  at  perihelion,  would  bring  it  into  veiy  close  proximity  with  the  earth.  There 
were  two  or  three  astronomers,  and  these  of  secondary  note,  who  resolutely  maintained  that  a  contact 
was  inevitable.  I  cannot  veiy  well  express  to  you  the  effect  of  this  intelligence  upon  the  people. 
For  a  few  short  days  they  would  not  believe  an  assertion  which  their  intellect,  so  long  employed 


A  MONOLOGUE  CONCERNING  THE  DEAD 

He  was  at  all  times  a  dreamer — dwelling  in  ideal  realms — in  heaven 
or  hell — peopled  with  the  creatures  and  accidents  of  his  brain.  He  walked 
the  streets,  in  madness  or  melancholy,  with  lips  moving  in  indistinct 
curses,  or  with  eyes  upturned  in  passionate  prayer,  (never  for  himself, 
for  he  felt,  or  professed  to  feel,  that  he  was  really  damned,)  but  for  their 
happiness  who  at  the  moment  were  objects  of  his  idolatry; — or,  with  his 
glances  introverted  to  a  heart  gnawed  with  anguish,  and  with  a  face 
shrouded  in  gloom,  he  would  brave  the  wildest  storms;  and  all  night,  with 
drenched  garments  and  arms  beating  the  winds  and  rains,  would  speak 
as  if  to  spirits  that  at  such  times  only  could  be  evoked  by  him  from  the 
Aidenn,  close  by  whose  portals  his  disturbed  soul  sought  to  forget  the  ills 
to  which  his  constitution  subjected  him — close  by  the  Aidenn  where  were 
those  he  loved — the  Aidenn  which  he  might  never  see,  but  in  fitful  glimpses 
as  its  gates  opened  to  receive  the  less  fiery  and  more  happy  natures  whose 
destiny  to  sin  did  not  involve  the  doom  of  death. 

(Extract  from  Griswold's  Memoir  of  Poe  published  in  the  third  volume 
of  his  edition  of  Foe's  Works.) 

Charmion  Converses  with  Eiros: 

These  are  the  Heights  set  apart  for  those  Great  of  Soul 
and  World- Worn.  Here,  they  dwell  in  Eternal  Rest.  In 
the  World  from  which  they  came  they  carried  heavy 
burdens  and,  despite  the  glorious  names  that  they  won, 
unbelievable  misfortunes  attended  them.  The  pinions 
which,  extended,  bore  them  so  bravely,  folded,  proved 
unwieldy  and  burdensome.  The  barbs  pointing  their  wing- 
feathers  irritated;  at  times  they  excoriated  those  with 
whom  they  were  brought  most  closely  in  contact.  Only  on 
those  rare  occasions  when  spreading  their  wings  they 
could  soar,  surmounting  all  earthly  obstacles,  did  they 
find  the  going  pleasant  and  the  way  delightful.  The  ob 
structions  were  many  and  the  weight  of  their  folded  wings 
proved  a  handicap  in  the  Race  of  Life. 


230    MONOLOGUE  CONCERNING  THE  DEAD 

The  Highways  that  they  were  compelled  to  travel  were 
rough,  obstructed  by  wrecks,  soiled  with  muck,  and  they 
mud-bespattered  those  who  ran  overswiftly.  For  this 
reason  certain  of  the  Elect  refused  to  travel  these  High 
ways  and  sought  the  Byways. 

All  who  believed  that  they  had  won  entrance  to  Aidenn 
did  not  gain  admission.  These  Heights  are  possessed  of  a 
tenuous  and  intoxicating  ozone  that  may  sustain  only 
those  who  by  an  especial  inheritance  were  created  to 
breathe  this  atmosphere. 

Changing  standards  of  succeeding  Ages  unaccountably 
govern  the  degree  of  adulation  paid  to  these  Dwellers. 
Many  of  our  Guests  do  not  even  recognize  that  Aged 
Man — bald,  wrinkled  and  blind,  although  conspicuous  by 
reason  of  the  strange  garments  that  he  wears.  His  diapha 
nous  robe  renders  him  so  indistinct  that  he  has  been  re 
garded  as  a  Myth,  and  his  corporeal  existence  has  been 
denied. 

At  one  time  He,  with  that  small  band  of  Ancients  with 
whom  he  alone  associates,  dominated  the  World  of  Let 
ters.  It  is  said  that  the  Epics  relating  the  misfortunes  and 
valorous  deeds  of  those  Trojan  Heroes  that  they  sang, 
filled  the  World  with  Melody.  These  judgments  have 
not  been  sustained  and  Posterity  is  fast  forgetting  their 
existence.  It  is  evident  that  few  recognize  or  can  con 
verse  with  them  and  they  have  been  relegated  to  the  inac 
cessible  Heights. 

Do  you  see  that  One  standing  apart,  whom  all  who  pass 
so  profoundly  salute?  Apparently  such  homage  amazes 
him,  for  he  remembers  that  while  he  lived  on  Earth  he 
received  scant  recognition.  His  contemporaries  failed  to 
appreciate  his  marvelous  performance  and  refused  him 
recopnition  as  their  Primate.  They  regarded  him  as  an 
interloper  who  made  undue  use  of  their  own  conceptions ; — 
"an  upstart  crow  beautified  with  our  feathers,"  but  so  care- 


MONOLOGUE  CONCERN  ING  THE  DEAD    231 

less  was  he  of  their  carping  criticisms  that  he  ignored  their 
sneers  and  pressed  on  to  his  work  unconscious  of  their 
existence.  He  does  recall  that  he  collected  appealing 
phrases  and  happy  expressions  culled  from  many  sources, 
and  that  he  wove  these  into  fabrics  that  fitted  his  fellow 
mummers,  which  sufficed  for  their  occasional  demands; 
but  the  World  did  not  applaud.  It  was  no  desire  for  per 
sonal  reputation  or  immortal  fame  that  caused  him  to 
labor  at  this  Work.  The  necessities  of  his  Co-workers 
rather  than  any  inclination  of  his  own  induced  him  to 
select  Ancient  Legends  and  Historical  Chronicles  and  to 
dress  them  in  the  figments  of  his  imagination,  picturing 
them  so  vividly  that  they  seemed  endowed  with  life.  So 
slight  was  the  labor  that  gave  birth  to  these  dream- 
children,  and  so  spontaneous  was  their  creation  that  he 
failed  to  appreciate  their  immortality.  So  unconsciously 
and  unpremeditatedly  did  they  well  forth  that  he  did  not 
recognize  the  melody  of  their  flow,  nor  did  he  realize  that 
he  had  discovered  the  Fountain  at  which  succeeding  gen 
erations  would  slake  their  intellectual  thirst.  He  sang 
as  the  mocking-bird  sings,  repeating  all,  harmonious  and 
beautiful,  that  he  heard,  and  in  the  crucible  of  his  brain 
he  transmuted  these  into  everliving  phrases.  At  the 
memory  of  Justice  Shallow  he  smiles,  and  he  recalls  with 
longing  his  cup  of  mulled  sack  and  his  hour  gossip  with 
Dame  Quickley.  He  has  forgotten  that  Celestial  flight 
when,  like  the  Queen  Bee  he  spread  his  wings  and  soared 
into  the  Empyrean,  returning  to  earth  impregnated  with 
Immortal  Accomplishment.  In  his  own  care-free  way  he 
made  no  attempt  to  hive  his  Heaven-begotten  Progeny, 
nor  did  he  realize  that  the  buzzing  of  their  wings  would 
grow  into  such  melodious  notes  that  others  would  feel 
impelled  to  register  them.  For  this  reason  it  is  said  that 
another  was  allowed  to  lay  its  moth  eggs  in  a  fabric  too 
precious  to  have  been  thus  defiled. 


232    MONOLOGUE  CONCERNING  THE  DEAD 

On  Earth  he  ignored  those  Apcients,  though  occasion 
ally  he  borrowed  some  trifle  from  them.  When  they  at 
tempted  to  bind  him  with  their  fetters,  he  broke  these 
restraining  bands  as  if  they  were  wythes  of  willow  and, 
in  defiance,  sang  songs  so  marvelous  that  he  unseated 
them  and  himself  occupied  their  vacated  throne. 

For  many  years  but  few  were  admitted  from  that  New 
Continent  with  which,  because  of  your  latest  reincarna 
tion,  you  are  now  familiar;  yet  these  few,  by  reason  of 
their  accomplishments,  have  markedly  increased  the  at 
tractiveness  of  a  residence,  and  enjoyment  of  the  life  lived 
in  Aidenn. 

Surely  you  recognize  that  wingless  one  so  vivaciously 
talking  to  the  gentle-faced,  high-browed  man  who  is  con 
spicuous  by  reason  of  his  wing-spread?  Although  lovable 
qualities  and  many  accomplishments  make  this  one  a  wel 
come  guest,  unaided,  he  could  never  have  scaled  these 
Heights.  For  this  reason  his  right  to  admittance  here  has 
been  questioned. 

You  have  seen  him  on  the  wing?  Those  appendages 
which  evidently  deceive  you,  are  not  wings.  They  are 
alae,  such  as  those  possessed  by  the  flying  fish,  which  can 
support  temporary  flight  only  when  the  start  is  with  suf 
ficient  momentum.  He  was  fortunate  in  the  fact  that  he 
resided  in  a  locality  in  which  the  climate  is  possessed  of 
that  peculiar  quality  that  transforms  such  wing-like 
appendages  into  pinions;  in  that  mirage-like  atmosphere 
such  illusions  are  not  infrequent.  Many  who  inhabit  that 
region  appear  to  soar  but  with  the  most  favoring  breezes 
they  cannot  attain  Aidenn.  There,  he  was  "The  Auto 
crat."  It  was  he  who  so  felicitously  described  "The  Race 
of  Life/'  The  one  with  whom  he  converses  is  Asteroid, 
the  winner  of  that  Race.  Yes,  Asteroid  does  bear  a 
marked  resemblance  to  the  Great  Stone  Face.  Although 
his  name  is  now  blazoned  he  had  but  an  indifferent  recep- 


MONOLOGUE  CONCERNING  THE  DEAD    233 

tion  in  the  world  from  which  he  came.  He  refused  to 
travel  the  Highways.  It  is  certain  that  his  wings  disturbed 
no  one  and  that  they  were  never  soiled.  So  hidden  was 
the  Many-gabled  House  in  which  he  lived  that  few  could 
find  the  Byway  leading  to  it ;  so  concealed  was  it  by  the 
spell  of  his  magic  that  its  actuality  was  denied. 

Both  Asteroid  and  the  Autocrat  reside  in  the  Vale  where 
the  gently  flowing  water's  tend  to  somnolence.  Only  occa 
sionally  does  Asteroid  scale  these  Heights  for  he  prefers 
the  quietude  of  his  Edenic  abode. 

Naturally  you  do  not  recognize  that  other  presence  who 
accompanies  these  two.  His  spindling  legs  barely  support 
the  corpulent  body.  Occasionally  he  serves  to  amuse. 
Whenever  the  Autocrat  pronounces  the  name  "Asteroid" 
there  seems  to  be  an  elision  of  the  last  syllable,  and  this 
ungainly  being  responds.  What  is  really  remarkable  is 
that,  on  earth,  this  one  had  seemed  a  desirable  companion. 
Familiarly  known  as  Dives  it  was  he,  under  the  entry 
name  "Sorrel,"  whom  the  World  judged  to  have  won  that 
Race.  So  swiftly  did  he  run  and  so  reckless  was  he  of 
muck  and  mire  that  the  yellow  mud  with  which  he  was 
encased  was  mistaken  for  an  aureola. 

His  occasional  admission  here  has  been  tolerated  by 
reason  of  an  incident  for  which  only  indirectly  is  he 
responsible.  From  the  mud  that  was  scaled  from  him  one 
of  the  World's  greatest  Libraries  was  constructed.  He 
can  not  understand  why  one  who  so  freely  furnished  the 
Fertilizer  should  not  participate  in  the  Harvest. 

Necessarily  you  recognize  the  One  occupying  the 
Heights.  He  could  be  none  other — Israfel.  Do  you  not 
recall  his  description : 

In  Heaven  a  Spirit  doth  dwell 
'Whose  heart  strings  are  a  lute;' 
None  sing  so  wildly  well 
As  the  angel  Israfel, 


234    MONOLOGUE  CONCERNING  THE  DEAD 

And  the  giddly  stars,  (so  legends  tell) 

Ceasing  their  hymns,  attend  the  spell 

Of  his  voice,  all  mute. 

If  I  could  dwell 

Where  Israfel 

Hath  dwelt,  and  he  where  I, 

He  might  not  sing  so  wildly  well 

A  mortal  melody, 

While  a  bolder  note  than  this  might  swell 

From  my  lyre  within  the  sky. 

Many  years  ago  there  was  a  young  country  endowed 
with  all  that  constitutes  earthy  greatness  but  it  lacked  a 
soul.  It  abounded  in  Highways  which  led  to  all  eminences 
and  to  every  point  of  vantage,  but  its  Byways  were  nar 
row  and  straight  and  many  difficulties  beset  those  who 
travelled  upon  them.  Travellers  necessarily  followed  the 
Highways,  or  they  suffered  privations  unbearable.  Only 
on  them  could  food  and  drink  be  found.  These  Highways 
were  constructed  of  earth  and  were  cut  deep  in  ruts.  In 
many  places  filth  offended,  for  this  way  was  travelled  by 
flocks  of  geese  not  inaptly  called  "Quacks  of  Helicon." 
They  cluttered  and  befouled  the  way,  gabbling  inces 
santly.  For  this  reason  certain  of  these  Highways  became 
impassable  for  those  demanding  quiet  and  cleanliness. 

Although  this  Nation  possessed  all  the  qualities  that 
constituted  greatness,  and  was  peculiarly  adapted  for  seiz 
ing  all  material  things  that  made  for  prosperity,  being 
especially  gifted  with  the  faculty  of  selecting  that  which 
made  for  individual  betterment,  they  were  singularly 
lacking  in  the  environment  requisite  for  intellectual 
growth.  For  their  regeneration  we  sent  Israfel,  our  best 
beloved.  We  armed  him  with  mighty  wings  arrow- 
pointed,  and  so  sharply  barbed  that  they  could  penetrate 
the  most  indurated  coating  of  self-conceit.  It  became  his 
task  to  drive  these  literary  quacks  from  the  Highways. 
He  was  compelled  to  strike  and  occasionally  to  flay  them 


MONOLOGUE  CONCERN  ING  THE  DEAD    235 

when  their  skins  became  unduly  calloused.  It  was  be 
lieved  that  his  presence  and  example  would  prove  the 
leavening  necessary  for  their  intellectual  regeneration. 
He  found  them  unruly  pupils  who  would  not  be  taught  by 
example,  nor  would  they  accept  instruction.  Although 
mightily  armed  Israfel  could  not  prevail,  and  association 
with  them  brought  upon  him  befoulment  unbelievable. 
We  knew  of  the  hostility  and  persecution  that  had  been 
heaped  upon  other  of  our  Messengers  equally  powerfully 
winged,  and  that  aid  and  comfort  must  be  furnished  for 
his  protection  during  those  dark  hours  when  his  wings 
grew  over-heavy  and  dragged  him  down.  For  this  reason 
we  sent  Her — Demeter,  the  Great  Mother — to  protect 
and  shield  him  in  this  unequal  struggle.  Do  you  not 
observe  her — that  one  with  her  arm  protectingly  thrown 
around  his  shoulders,  while  he  holds  one  other  by  the 
hand?  This  one  clings  to  him,  and  shrinkingly  avoids  all 
others.  We  call  her  Astarte.  She  is  an  ethereal  spirit  too 
delicately  constitutioned  to  have  long  withstood  the  rigors 
of  that  inhospitable  climate  from  which  she  came.  In 
the  life  lived  there  these  three  suffered  bitterly  and  they 
still  bear  the  stigmata  of  their  crucifixion.  Time,  with 
happier  surroundings,  may  obliterate  their  scars.  Here, 
they  are  inseparable  and  together  they  receive  the  homage 
of  the  Elect. 

Observe  Israfel,  oblivious  of  all  else  in  the  rapt  atten 
tion  with  which  he  regards  that  Reader!  Yes,  it  is  the 
Great  Laureate  whom,  once  upon  a  time,  Israfel  so  enthu 
siastically  praised.  Here,  he  and  Israfel  are  in  constant 
communion;  together  they  give  forth  their  songs  with 
cadence  so  mellifluous  that  it  accords  with  the  Heavenly 
Choir. 

That  figure  with  noble  mien,  whose  snow  white  hair  and 
flowing  beard  so  markedly  distinguish  him?  Israfel 
beckons  him  to  approach  and  The  Laureate  extends  a 


236    MONOLOGUE  CONCERNING  THE  DEAD 

welcoming  hand,  yet  he  hesitates  to  become  one  of  this 
group  and  remains  apart  patiently  awaiting  Posterity's 
verdict.  It  is  said  that  he  adopted  and  translated  what 
ever  could  be  found  that  was  harmonious  and  beautiful, 
but  that  his  own  creations  lacked  substance.  Whatever 
the  verdict  be,  it  is  certain  that  he  deserved  the  quotation 
that  Israfel  once  applied  to  him :  nil  tetigit  quod  non  ornavit. 
Surely  all  things  he  touched  he  glorified. 

And  that  one,  so  handsome  and  debonair  with  the  flow 
ing  locks,  who  bears  himself  so  proudly?  He  approaches 
confidently  and  Israfel  greets  him  as  an  equal,  though  The 
Laureate  fails  to  recognize  him.  Israfel  presents  him  as 
a  poet  but  The  Laureate  can  recall  no  performance.  With 
a  shudder  he  does  recall  one  couplet : 

But  the  wind  without  was  bitter  and  sharp 
Of  Sir  Launfal's  gray  hair  it  made  a  harp. 

He  fails  to  recognize  this  description  for  the  tonsure  is 
perfect  and  not  one  stray  lock  can  be  mistaken  for  the 
string  of  a  harp.  He  cannot  understand  why  an  Ambas 
sador  apparelled  in  knee  breeches  and  silk  stockings,  still 
wearing  the  insignia  that  marked  him  as  a  representative 
to  the  Court  of  St.  James,  has  been  admitted  to  Aidenn. 
He  does  not  know  that  Israfel  urged  it  as  a  reward  of  an 
old  friendship. 

No,  as  a  rule  no  one  suffering  with  mental  disorder  is 
allowed  admission  here.  Yet  it  occasionally  happens  that 
only  by  such  admission  can  those  afflicted  with  certain 
forms  of  incurable  mania  be  quieted. 

Although  these  bibliomaniac  patients  have  been  segre 
gated  and,  under  no  circumstances,  are  they  allowed  to 
approach  our  guests,  nevertheless  residence  on  these 
Heights  alleviates  their  mental  restlessness.  The  air  is 
impregnated  with  the  effuvia  emanating  from  genius  and, 
for  this  reason,  exerts  a  balsamic  and  soporific  influence 


MONOLOGUE  CONCERNING  THE  DEAD    237 

most  soothing  to  those  obsessed  with  this  peculiar  afflic 
tion.  It  is  true  that  while  they  were  inhabitants  of  the 
earth  they  treated  many  of  our  guests  contumeliously  and 
failed  to  recognize  their  great  performance.  Occasionally 
they  are  allowed  admission,  for  they  act  as  scavengers 
carefully  gathering  the  smallest  scraps  of  paper  that  have 
been  touched  by  the  hands  of  the  Elect.  With  pride  they 
exhibit  and  boast  of  their  collections,  imagining  that  this 
ownership  reflects  glory  upon  them;  their  bibliomania  is  a 
harmless  form  of  disease  and  in  some  unexplainable  way 
this  occupation  quiets  them.  The  treatment  is  merely 
palliative  for  the  more  they  indulge  the  more  confirmed 
do  they  become  in  their  mania. 

And  that  creature  wobbling  on  two  legs  but  giving  no 
other  evidence  that  it  is  human  ?  I  know  that  it  is  a  horror 
and  that  it  disgusts  all  whom  it  approaches.  It  is  ad 
mitted  for  a  specific  purpose  and  it  can  only  enter  when 
accompanied  by  its  keeper,  that  limping  individual  with 
the  cloven  foot. 

Israfel  occasionally  poses  as  a  scientist  and  has  even 
attempted,  with  his  mighty  wings,  to  scale  the  heavenly 
firmament,  but  so  peculiarly  were  they  constructed  that 
they  could  not  sustain  him  in  such  a  flight.  He  is  ex 
tremely  friendly  with  that  old  gentleman — here  known 
under  the  cognomen  Werther — who,  though  a  peer  among 
our  most  noble  poets,  still  insists  that  by  mistake  he  was 
assigned  to  these  Heights.  He  believes  that  his  proper 
abode  is  in  that  Valley  where  the  Scientists  dwell.  He 
demanded  entrance  there  but  was  coldly  received,  and 
his  pretensions  were  ignored,  so  that,  under  protest,  he  has 
returned  and  again  abides  with  us.  Werther  and  Israfel 
are  bound  by  a  bond  of  friendship  based  on  the  admira 
tion  that  each  bears  the  other  because  of  their  scientific 
attainments.  While  their  fields  of  research  lie  far  apart, 
the  spirit  of  investigation  animates  both  and  draws  them 


238    MONOLOGUE  CONCERNING  THE  DEAD 

into  the  closest  union.  It  is  true  that  neither  one  fully 
comprehends  the  arguments  adduced  by  the  other,  yet, 
for  that  very  reason,  they  are  the  more  tolerant  of  all 
theories  advanced. 

Werther  was  explaining  that  our  embryonic  develop 
ment  closely  follows  the  permanent  forms  found  in  the 
lower  animals ;  at  one  time  we  were  spineless  and  heartless 
and  only  in  the  course  of  aeons  did  we  begin  to  assume 
the  human  shape  and  that  we  were  altogether  neither 
brute  nor  human ;  he  further  asserted  that,  sooner  or  later, 
the  missing  link  would  be  found.  At  this  Israfel  became 
greatly  interested.  He  insisted  that  once  he  had  met  such 
an  animal.  It  was  at  his  urgent  solicitation  that  this 
wobbling  creature  was  admitted,  doubly  welcome  because 
he  was  guarded  by  one  whom  Werther  knew  as  Mephis- 
topheles,  and  with  whom  he  had  become  somewhat  closely 
associated.  Werther  expects  to  demonstrate  on  this  beast 
that  the  cranium  consists  of  vertebrae  so  expanded  as  to 
hold  the  slowly  enlargening  brain.  Whether  these  verte 
brae  are  three  or  four  in  number  seemed  to  be  the  matter 
under  discussion.  I  fear  that  they  are  now  contemplating 
vivisection  in  order  to  determine  this  unsettled  question, 
but  the  Great  Jehovah  will  forbid.  He  knows  that  this 
animal  is  microcephalous  and  that  if  dissected  it  will 
exhibit  an  abnormal  diminution  of  brain  matter.  This 
animal  is  not  responsible  for  its  abnormality.  I  fear  that 
the  Potter  was  careless  and  that  many  other  deformities 
exist  that  also  unfit  it  for  human  intercourse.  That  bulg 
ing  protuberance  is  not  a  heart :  the  mass  that  resembles 
one  is  a  jelly  fish  with  its  cold  and  clammy  processes  ad 
hering  to  and  besliming  all  things  with  which  it  comes  in 
contact.  This  animal  once  infused  into  a  crystal  chalice 
that  Israfel  gave  to  it  for  safe  keeping  a  potion  so  nauseous 
that  it  sickened  the  whole  world.  Why  hold  it  on  a  leash  ? 
It  is  a  treacherous  beast  and  is  void  of  understanding. 


MONOLOGUE  CONCERNING  THE  DEAD    239 

For  some  reason  it  assumes  that  this  is  its  rightful  home 
and,  were  it  not  restrained,  it  would  disgust  our  guests  by 
its  beslobbering  attempts  to  lick  their  hands.  It  seems 
that  once  upon  a  time  this  was  its  working  plan  that  for  a 
short  time  succeeded.  By  some  it  was  regarded  as  a  pos 
sible  aspirant  for  this  abode;  unfortunately  for  its  pre 
tensions  not  one  of  its  friends  has  been  able  to  attain  these 
Heights  and  for  this  reason  none  here  will  give  it  recog 
nition  :  on  the  other  hand  it  failed  to  recognize  those  who 
were  rightfully  entitled  to  enter.  After  all  it  is  to  be  more 
pitied  than  despised;  being  both  brainless  and  heartless, 
it  cannot  be  over-harshly  judged  because  its  actions  did 
not  square  with  the  dictates  of  humanity. 

In  this  beast's  attempt  to  deceive  the  World  it  was 
partially  successful  in  passing  off  those  long  and  flapping 
ears  as  wings,  so  unusually  large  and  mobile  were  they. 
At  a  distance  they  easily  could  have  been  so  mistaken. 
Though  this  thing  wore  the  skin  of  a  lion  this  was  soon 
recognized  to  be  a  harmless  pose.  Whenever  and  wher 
ever  it  opened  its  mouth,  the  deep  and  reverberating  tones 
of  the  voice  made  evident  its  species.  For  some  years  it 
did  succeed  in  hiding  its  greatest  deformity  but  when,  in 
time,  that  protuberance  occupying  the  heart's  position 
was  opened,  the  stench  became  a  public  scandal.  The 
World  has  tried  to  forget  him  but  it  can  not  because  he 
has  gone  down  to  posterity  as  "the  unfaithful  servant  who 
betrayed  his  trust." 


APPENDIX 


APPENDIX  A 

POE'S  REVIEW  OF  GRISWOLD'S 

"THE  POETS  AND  POETRY  OF  AMERICA"  PUBLISHED 

IN  THE  "PHILADELPAIA  SATURDAY 

MUSEUM"  IN  THE  YEAR  1843 

Reprinted  from  Gill's  "The  Life  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe." 

"THE  POETS  AND  POETRY  OF  AMERICA.    With  an  Historical  Intro 
duction.    By  Rufus  W.  Griswold. 

Here  the  free  spirit  of  mankind  at  length 
Throws  its  last  fetters  off;  and  who  shall  place 
A  limit  to  the  giant's  unchained  strength, 
Or  curb  his  swiftness  in  the  forward  race? 

BRYANT. 

Ere  long  thine  every  stream  shall  find  a  tongue, 
Land  of  the  many  waters. — HOFFMAN. 

Third  Edition.    Revised,  with  Illustrations.    Philadelphia: 
Carey  &  Hart,  Chestnut  Street." 

Perhaps  no  work  ever  appeared  whose  announcement  created  a 
greater  sensation  among  the  poetasters  of  the  land,  whose  editor  was 
so  puffed,  praised,  and  glorified  in  advance,  and  which  was  so  uni 
versally  assailed  on  its  advent,  as  "The  Poets  and  Poetry  of  America." 
Is  Mr.  —  we  ask  his  pardon, — the  Reverend  Mr.  Griswold,  the  man  of 
varied  talents,  of  genius,  of  known  skill,  of  overweening  intellect,  he 
was  somewhile  pictured,  or  is  he  the  arrant  literary  quack  he  is  now 
entitled  by  the  American  press?  If  he  is  a  man  of  genius,  or  even 
great  talents,  signal  injustice  has  been  done  him;  and  if  not,  his  as 
sumption  of  such  a  character  cannot  be  too  sufficiently  reprobated. 
Genius  we  defined  in  a  former  review.  The  best  means  to  establish 
a  man's  right  to  the  title,  is  to  examine  his  past  course  and  his  present 
position. 

The  first  knowledge  we  had  of  Mr.  Griswold  was  his  occupancy  of 
the  position  of  assistant,  or  junior  editor,  some  years  since,  to  a  minor 
sheet  entitled  "The  New  Yorker,"  then  of  the  New  York  "Brother 


244  APPENDIX 

Jonathan,"  then  in  the  same  capacity  to  the  "Daily  Standard,"  (a 
political  sheet  published  in  Philadelphia  during  the  Harrison  cam 
paign,)  under  that  Atlas  of  intellect,  Francis  L.  Grund,  and  finally,  on 
Mr.  Grund's  withdrawal  from  the  connection,  sole  editor.  The  paper 
(a  notorious  fact !)  immediately  fell  off  in  circulation,  and  died  in  less 
than  three  weeks  after  his  assuming  the  editorship.  We  next  find  him 
in  his  former  subordinate  capacity  to  the  "Boston  Notion,"  and 
finally  as  editor  to  the  "Post,"  and  "Graham's  Magazine,"  or,  as  it  is 
entitled  by  that  chaste  and  exquisite  sheet,  the  New  York  Herald, 
"The  American  Blackwood." 

After  the  death  of  the  "Standard,"  Carey  &  Hart  announced  the 
present  work,  and  our  author  arose  from  comparative  insignificance 
to  be  the  idol  of  all  the  poetical  editors  and  would-be  great  men  in 
America.  The  book  appeared,  and  "lafleur  dune  heure"  faded  into 
nothingness. 

"Up  like  a  rocket,  and  down  like  its  stick," 
is  a  terse  epitaph  on  his  career. 

One  question  now  remains  to  be  answered:  Did  the  "Jonathan"  or 
the  "Notion"  attain  any  higher  position  than  before,  during  Mr.  G.'s 
connection  with  them;  or  have  the  "Post"  and  "Graham's  Magazine" 
improved  under  his  supervision?  The  "Standard"  we  leave  out  of  the 
question,  as  it  expired  under  his  management.  Certainly  not  as  to  the 
former;  and  the  brilliant  career  of  Graham's  Magazine  under  Mr. 
Poe's  care,  and  its  subsequent  trashy  literary  character  since  his  re 
tirement,  is  a  sufficient  response.  Mr.  Griswold's  genius,  at  least,  has 
not  benefited  his  employers.  But  that  he  has  no  claim  to  that  char 
acter  is  evident,  and  we  do  not  believe  his  warmest  admirer  (if  he  has 
one?)  will  insist  on  his  right  to  bear  the  title.  That  he  has  some 
talents  we  allow,  but  they  are  only  those  of  a  mediocre  character ;  in 
deed,  every  third  man  one  might  meet  in  a  day's  walk  is  his  equal,  if 
not  his  superior.  As  a  critic,  his  judgment  is  worthless,  for  a  critic 
should  possess  sufficient  independence  and  honesty  to  mete  out  justice 
to  all  men,  without  fear,  favor,  or  partiality,  as  well  as  be  a  man  of 
various  acquirements,  or  at  least  a  linguist  and  classical  scholar.  Is 
Mr.  Griswold  one  of  these?  No!  The  review  department  of  Gra 
ham's  Magazine,  and  its  original  literary  contents,  monthly,  exhibit 
ample  evidence  of  his  want  of  taste  and  inability  if  not  of  critical 
honesty;  while  its  very  cover  displays  his  want  of  judgment  in  com 
mon-sense  business  matters,  and  his  egotism  and  petty  envy  and 
dislikes  of  men  he  dares  not  openly  assail.  As  an  instance,  we  have  the 


APPENDIX  245 

"Principal  Contributors,"  W.  C.  Bryant,  J.  F.  Cooper,  R.  H.  Dana, 
H.  W.  Longfellow,  C.  F.  Hoffman  (horresco  referensl),  T.  C.  Grattan, 
N.  P.  Willis,  and  H.  W.  Herbert,  arranged  in  proper  order.  We  ask, 
is  this  in  accordance  with  the  age,  established  reputation,  or  merits 
of  the  several  authors? 

Are  Dana  and  Hoffman  the  superiors  of  N.  P.  Willis,  who  has 
written  more  beautiful  and  true  poetry  than  either  of  them?  Is  Bry 
ant  a  better  poet  than  Longfellow  ?  Certainly  not,  for  in  Longfellow's 
pages  the  spirit  of  poetry — ideality — walks  abroad,  while  Bryant's 
sole  merit  is  tolerable  versification  and  fine  marches  of  description. 
Longfellow  is  unquestionably  the  best  poet  in  America.  These  gentle 
men  would  be  better  placed  in  alphabetical  order,  or  at  least  in  ac 
cordance  with  their  actual  merits.  In  the  latter  view  they  might  be 
ranked  thus:  H.  W.  Longfellow,  W.  C.  Bryant,  N.  P.  Willis,  and  R.  H. 
Dana,  as  poets,  and  J.  F.  Cooper  and  T.  C.  Grattan,  as  prose  writers; 
while  such  names  as  C.  F.  Hoffman,  whose  only  merit  is  his  wealth, 
and  H.  W.  Herbert,  who  has  written  more  trash  than  any  man  living 
with  the  exception  of  Fay,  should  be  excluded  to  make  room  for  those 
of  men  of  more  substantial  character  as  writers. 

In  the  "Prospectus,"  Mr.  Griswold's  self-esteem  is  strangely  devel 
oped.  Here  we  have  him  in  his  capacity  of  "author"  of  the  "Poets 
and  Poetry  of  America,"  as  thirteenth  in  the  list,  and  of  course 
superior  in  rank  to  Sargent,  Benjamin,  Simms,  Lowell,  Thomas,  Poe, 
Hill,  our  own  Conrad  (one  of  the  sweetest  poets  of  the  time),  Greeley, 
&c.,  &c.,  who  follow  him.  Unexampled  modesty!  In  the  same  list 
we  find  C.  J.  Peterson  ranked  as  the  superior  of  Greeley,  Ingraham, 
Colton,  Robert  Morris,  Reynell  Coates,  Field,  &c. 

Again,  how  modestly  our  critic  puffs  himself  in  his  remarks  on  the 
"Editorial  Department": — "The  criticisms  of  Grahams  Magazine  are 
acknowledged  in  all  parts  of  this  country  to  be  superior  in  acumen, 
honesty,  and  independence  to  those  of  any  contemporary.  Indeed,  while 
a  majority  of  the  monthly  and  quarterly  journals  have  become  mere  adver 
tising  mediums  for  the  booksellers,,  in  which  everything  'in  print*  is  in 
discriminately  praised,  this  periodical  is  looked  upon  as  a  just  and 
discriminating  arbiter  between  authors  and  readers,  in  which  both  can 
have  implicit  confidence"  Pretty  well  that,  for  a  modest  man,  Mr.  G., 
particularly  in  the  assumption  of  praise  given  to  the  former  editor,  to 
whose  criticisms  it  was  awarded,  and  who,  it  is  well  known,  made  the 
magazine.  Is  this,  or  is  this  not,  sailing  under  false  colors?  How 
ever,  our  compiler  is  right.  Any  flag  is  better  than  his  own.  And 
in  literture,  as  in  piracy,  the  free-trader  always  "runs  up"  the  best 


246  APPENDIX 

at  his  fore ;  but  had  we  done  this,  we  should  blush  at  our  own  impu 
dence  in  knowing  that  we  had  been  guilty  of  one  of  the  most  bare 
faced  pieces  of  literary  swindling  of  modern  days. 

Mais,  revenous  a  nos  moutons,  and  a  very  muttonish  production  it 
is — "The  Poets  and  Poetry  of  America."  Is  it  fair  to  condemn  Mr. 
Griswold's  ability  to  act  as  a  judge  and  critic  of  our  poets  without 
examining  into  his  poetical  and  critical  competency?  Certainly  not; 
and  in  the  premises  we  shall  act  justly,  generously,  and  impartially. 
"Just!"  we  think  we  hear  our  poet  exclaim,  like  the  man  arraigned  for 
horsestealing,  when  told  by  his  judge  he  should  have  justice  done  him. 
"Justice!  plase  your  Honor's  glory — that's  the  very  thing  I  don't 
want."  Mr.  G.,  however,  claims  to  be  a  poet,  and  deduces  from  that 
position  his  competency  to  judge  of  the  poetry  of  others.  Let  us 
apply  the  touchstone  to  his  latest  acknowledged  article,  "THE  SUN 
SET  STORM,"  published  in  his  (Graham's  Magazine,  September,  1842; 
and  if  that  does  not  prove  him  to  possess  as  little  of  the  divine  afflatus, 
artistical  skill,  and  knowledge  of  plain  English  construction,  as  a 
Desert-of-Sahara  Arab,  let  our  criticism  go  for  naught. 

We  shall  premise  with  a  short  notice  of  the  art  of  versification;  an 
art  which  our  best  poets  are  ignorant  of,  or  wilfully  misunderstand, 
and  which  our  first  writers  on  Prosody  have  entirely  misrepresented. 
Cooper,  whose  grammar  is  extensively  used,  defines  it  to  be  "the 
arrangement  of  a  certain  number  of  syllables  according  to  certain 
laws,"  yet  lays  down  no  laws  for  its  government,  but  drops  the  sub 
ject,  fearful  of  burning  his  fingers.  Indeed,  all  the  writers  on  Prosody, 
from  Brown  to  Murray,  have  almost  entirely  waived  the  subject, 
while  the  little  they  have  said  is  founded  on,  and  consequently  a 
mass  of — error. 

VERSIFICATION  is  the  art  by  which  various  feet  of  equal  quantity, 
though  differing  in  the  number  of  syllables,  are  arranged  in  harmoni 
ous  order,  and  made  to  form  verse.  POETRY,  in  its  most  confined 
sense,  is  the  result  of  versification,  but  may  be  more  properly  defined  as 
the  rhythmical  personification  of  existing  or  ideal  beauty.  One  defines 
it  as  the  "rhythmical  creation  of  beauty" ;  but  though  it  certainly  is  a 
"creation  of  beauty"  in  itself,  it  is  more  properly  a  personification, 
for  the  poet  only  personifies  the  images  previously  created  by  his 
mind.  FEET  are  the  parts  of  verse  by  which,  when  harmoniously 
associated,  the  reader  steps  along,  as  it  were,  in  a  measured  manner, 
through  the  whole.  They  are  composed  of  one,  two,  or  three  variously 
accented  and  unaccented  syllables.  The  only  feet  admitted  by  our 
language  are  the  Iambus,  Trochee,  Dactyl,  Anapest,  and  Caesura. 


APPENDIX  247 

The  Tribrach,  Amphibrach,  and  Pyrrhic,  though  adopted  in  English 
Prosody  by  very  erudite  writers,  never  did  and  never  can  exist  in  its 
poetry.  Of  these  hereafter. 

The  IAMBUS  is  composed  of  two  syllables,  one  short  and  one  long ; 
as, 

"I  stand  |  beneath  |  the  mys  |  tic  moon." 

The  TROCHEE,  of  the  same  number,  but  exactly  the  reverse  of  the 
former;  as, 

"In  the  |  greenest  |  of  our  |  valleys." 

Here  "of"  is  made  long  by  emphasis. 

"In  a  |  sunny,  |  smiling  |  valley," 
is  a  better  exemplification  of  the  Trochee. 

The  SPONDEE  is  composed  of  two  long  syllables;  as,  "wild  wood," 
"pale  moon,"  "wind  sown,"  and  is  only  used  to  prevent  monotony, 
or  to  produce  some  striking  effect  in  versification.  In  the  commence 
ment  of  verse  the  Trochee  is  preferable.  It  is  likewise  the  only  foot, 
with  the  exception  of  the  Caesura,  which  cannot  be  used  to  form  con 
tinuous  verse.  Longfellow  thought  it  might,  and  murdered  harmony 
most  horribly  in  attempting  English  Hexameter,  a  species  of  verse 
which,  though  beautiful  in  the  Latin,  can  never  be  introduced  in  our 
language,  owing  to  its  wanting  a  sufficient  number  of  Spondees.  A 
language  correctly  described  by  Holmes  as — 

"Our  grating  English,  whose  Teutonic  jar 
Shakes  the  rack'd  axle  of  Art's  rattling  car." 

The  DACTYL  is  a  foot  composed  of  three  syllables,  two  short,  pre 
ceded  by  one  long ;  as, 

"Ragged  and  |  weary  one,  |  where  art  thou  |  traveling?" 

The  ANAPEST  is  the  converse  of  the  Dactyl ;  as, 

"On  a  rock  |  by  the  O  |  cean,  all  lone  |  ly  and  sad." 

The  CAESURA — the  word  is  from  the  Greek,  and  signifies  "a  pause" 
— is  a  foot  composed  of  one  long  syllable,  equal  in  quantity  to,  that  is, 
occupying  the  same  time  in  pronunciation  as  the  Dactyl,  Anapest, 
Iambus  or  Trochee.  It  is  properly  used  in  English  poetry  to  give  a 


248  APPENDIX 

sonorous  close  to,  or  to  produce  a  striking  and  forcible  commence 
ment  in  verse.  We  shall  give  an  example  from  Longfellow,  who  uses 
it  in  the  latter  case,  without  knowing  of  its  existence,  as  a  distinct  fact. 

"In  the  |  market  |  place  of  |  Bruges  |  stands  the  |  belfry,  |  old  and  | 
brown" 

Here,  by  reading  the  verse,  the  ear  will  observe  that  "brown," 
which  is  the  Caesura,  consumes  the  same  time  as  any  of  the  Trochees 
of  which  the  line  is  composed. 

All  our  Prosodists  define  the  Caesura  (and  we  give  the  definition  in 
our  own  words,  as  it  is  impossible  to  form  an  idea  of  its  use  from  theirs) 
as  a  pause  introduced  for  the  purpose  of  producing  harmony,  in  a 
single  verse  of  couplet,  between  "two  members  of  the  same  verse," 
by  which  the  one  is  placed  in  direct  comparison  with  the  other;  as, 

"See  the  bold  youth"  strain  up  the  threat'ning  steep, 
Rush  through  the  thickets",  down  the  valleys  sweep." 

( •)  Being  the  marks  by  which  they  designate  the  Caesura,  which  they 
use,  as  will  be  readily  perceived,  only  in  an  elocutionary  sense. 

We,  too,  use  the  Caesura  as  a  pause — a  pause  compelled  by  the  posi 
tion  of,  and  upon  the  foot — of  the  voice,  which  renders  it  equal  in 
quantity  to  any  of  the  larger  feet,  and  at  the  same  time  gives  to  the 
close  of  the  verse,  where  it  is  most  frequently  found,  a  singular  rich 
ness,  as  well  as  sonorous  fulness  and  force.  When  the  Caesura  termi 
nates  a  verse,  the  poet  can  immediately  step  in  the  next  into  another 
species  of  foot  without  producing  the  slightest  discord.  The  follow 
ing  is  an  example  of  its  commencing  and  concluding  a  stanza. 

March!  \  March!  \  March! 

From  the  |  yawning  |  grave  they  |  come; 
And  |  thousands  |  rise,  with  |  lidless  |  eyes, 

As  |  taps  the  |  fun'ral  |  drum. 
Heavi  |  ly  their  |  white  arms  |  swinging,  | 

Clatter,  |  clatter  |  on  they  |  go; 

Up  in  |  curling  |  eddies  |  flinging  | 

High  the  |  fleecy  |  snow. 

It  will  be  seen  that  this  stanza  is  scanned  precisely  as  if  it  were 
written  in  one  continuous  verse,  which  is  the  proper  mode  in,  and 
peculiar  to  our  language;  as, 


APPENDIX  249 

March!  \  March!  \  March!  \  From  the  |  yawning  |  grave  they  |  come, 
and  |  thousands  |  rise  with  |  lidless  |  eyes  as  |  taps  the  |  funeral  j  drum. 

The  arrangement  of  the  same  depending  entirely  upon  the  will  of 
the  poet. 

The  Caesura  has  been  used,  "time  out  of  mind,"  by  all  our  poets, 
but  with  a  perfect  ignorance  of  ijts  present  character.  This  discovery, 
as  well  as  that  of  the  above  mode  of  scansion,  was  left  to  Edgar  A. 
Poe,  who  has  spent  more  time  in  analyzing  the  construction  of  our 
language  than  any  living  grammarian,  critic,  or  essayist.  The  fol 
lowing  is  an  example  of  his  use  of  this  foot  in  the  "Haunted  Palace:" 

"In  the  greenest  of  our  valleys, 

By  good  angels  tenanted, 
Once  a  fair  and  stately  palace 

(Snow-white  palace)  reared  its  head. 
In  the  monarch  Thought's  dominion, 

It  stood  there! 
Never  seraph  spread  a  pinion 

Over  fabric  half  so /air." 

With  this  brief  analysis,  sufficient  to  explain  the  subject,  we  return 
to  the  examination  of  the  "Sunset  Storm." 

The  sum  |  mer  sun  |  has  sunk  |  to  rest 
Very  fair,  Mr.  G. 

Below  |  the  green  |  clad  hills.  | 

This  is  Iambic,  the  simplest  of  all  verse;  yet  in  the  second  verse, 
or  as  Mr.  G.  would  call  it,  the  second  "/ine,"  we  have  a  positive  error. 
"Green  clad  hills"  are  three  consecutive  long  syllables,  and  "clad 
hills"  being  a  Spondee,  has  no  business  in  that  position  in  the  verse. 
Mr.  Griswold  commences  with  a  quiet  picture  of  the  sun  sinking  to 
rest,  which  the  sun  always  does  quietly,  as  he  ought ;  and  the  second 
should,  consequently,  harmonize  with  the  preceding  verse,  to  carry 
out  the  idea.  "Green  clad  hills"  is  as  harsh  as  the  grating  of  a  coffee- 
mill. 

"The  summer  sun  has  sunk  to  rest 
Below  the"  lofty  "hills," 

or  any  other  sort  of  "hills,"  where  the  adjective  is  an  Iambus,  would 
make  it  melody.    Let  us  proceed: 


250  APPENDIX 

"And  through  |  the  skies  |  career  |  ing  fast, 
The  storm  |  cloud  rides  |  upon  |  the  blast, 
And  now  |  the  rain  |  distilfe." 

Here  the  same  error  is  again  repeated,  "storm-cloud"  being,  like 
"green-clad,"  a  compound  word,  and  distil  is  spelt  with  two  "ll's." 

"The  flash  |  we  see,  |  the  peal  |  we  hear,  | 
With  winds  |  blent  in  \  their  wild  |  career." 

"Blent  in"  is  the  most  horrible  massacre  of  harmony  we  ever  en 
countered.  It  is  neither  fish,  flesh,  nor  fowl;  neither  a  Spondee, 
Trochee,  or  an  Iambus;  and,  deuce  take  us!  if  we  know  what  to  make 
of  it.  In  Christian  charity,  Mr.  G.,  enlighten  us! 

"Till  pains  |  the  ear." 

A  most  appropriate  verse.  It  certainly  pains  our  ear  to  proceed  with 
the  next. 

"It  is  |  the  voice  |  of  the  |  Storm-King." 

Did  any  one  ever  read  such  delectable  doggerel  ?  Did  any  one  ever 
see  such  a  number  of  short  syllables  collected  in  one  "line,"  or  see 
such  a  line  published,  with  a  grave  face,  as  poetry.  "We  defy  even 
Mrs.  Wood  to  sing  it  musically.  "The  voice"  is  the  only  legitimate 
Iambus  in  the  whole  line.  "It  is,"  we  are  compelled  to  read  "It  is," 
to  make  the  verse  read  musically.  "Of  the"  is  a  Trochee,  unless  Mr. 
G.  would  have  us  read  "of  the"  which,  from  the  versification  pre 
cedent  and  subsequent,  we  should  imagine  he  wishes  us  to  do.  "Storm- 
King"  is  another  compound  word,  and  a  Spondee. 

"Leading  |  his  ban  |  ner'd  hosts  |  along  |  the  sky, 
And  drench  |  ing  with  |  his  floods  |  the  ster  |  ile  lands  |  and  dry." 

Here  we  have  a  Trochee,  "leading,"  commencing  the  verse.  This 
is  not  objectionable,  for  it  expresses  an  action — "leading  his  ban 
ner 'd  hosts."  Its  introduction  frequently  produced  a  fine  artistical 
and  highly  poetical  effect,  and  the  poet's  as  well  as  the  reader's  ear 
is  the  best  judge  when  it  should  be  used.  We  will  give  one  or  two 
examples,  since  we  are  riding  our  favorite  horse  of  versification. 

"And  loud  |  ly  on  |  the  ev'  |  ning's  breath,  | 
Rang  the  |  shrill  cry  |  of  sud  |  den  death!" 

"Rang  the,"  a  Trochee,  followed  by  the  Spondee  "shrill  cry,"  ex- 


APPENDIX  251 

presses  forcibly  the  actual  presence  and  force  of  the  sound  on  the 
breath,  that  is,  over  the  low  murmur  of  the  evening  wind.  Again,  in 
Byron's  "Childe  Harold," 

"The  sky  |  is  changed,  |  and  such  |  a  change!  |  O  night! 
And  storm,  |  and  dark  |  ness !   Ye  |  are  wond  |  rous  strong, 
Yet  love  |  ly  in  |  your  strength  |  as  is  |  the  light  | 
Of  a  |  dark  eye  |  in  wo  |  man.    Far  |  along 
From  peak  |  to  peak  |  her  rat  |  tling  crags  |  among  | 
Leaps  the  |  live  thun  |  der!    Not  |  from  one  |  lone  cloud,"  &c. 

Here  is  the  same  definite  expression  of  passion  and  action  in  "of  a 
dark  eye,"  and  "leaps  the  live  thunder."  You  can  feel  the  loveliness 
of  the  eye,  and  hear  the  crash  of,  and  see  the  thunder  leaping.  How 
different  are  Mr.  Griswold's  and  Lord  Byron's  descriptions  of  a 
Storm! 

We  copy  from,  the  same  Magazine  that  contains  the  "Sunset 
Storm,"  for  Mr.  Griswold's  especial  edification,  a  fine  specimen  of 
Iambic  verse,  and  advise  him  when  next  he  uses  that  "foot,"  to  take 
it  as  a  model.  It  is  from  the  "Haunted  Heart,"  by  a  Miss  Mary  L. 
Lawson,  whose  ear  seems  to  be  nearly  faultlessly  correct. 

"Ne'er  from  his  heart  the  vision  fades  away; 

Amid  the  crowd,  in  silence  and  alone, 
The  stars  by  night,  the  clear  blue  sky  by  day, 

Bring  to  his  mind  the  happiness  that's  flown; 
A  tone  of  song,  the  warbling  of  the  birds, 

The  simplest  thing  that  memory  endears, 
Can  still  recall  the  form,  the  voice,  the  words 

Of  her,  the  best  beloved  of  early  years." 

In  the  same  poem  we  find  the  following  highly-finished  and  de 
scriptive  lines: 

'"And  watched  the  rippling  currents  as  they  played 
In  ebb  and  flow  upon  the  banks  of  flowers" 

We  stand,  as  it  were,  upon  the  river's  bank ! 

We  mentioned  something  before  of  the  use  of  Spondees  in  Latin 
Hexameter,  and  to  make  our  position  perfectly  understood,  shall 
quote  a  few  examples  from  different  authors. 


252  APPENDIX 


"In  nova  I  fert  ani  I  mus  mu  I  tatas  I  dicere  I  formas 


Corpora  |  Di  coep  |  tis  nam  |  vos  mu  |  tastis  et  |  illas." — OVID. 


"Tityre  |  tu  patu  |  lae  recu  |  bans  sub  |  tegmine  |  fagi." — VIRGIL. 
"Nox  ruit  |  et  fus  |  cis  tel  |  lurem,  |  plectitur  |  alls." — IBID. 
This  last  line  is  written 

"Nox  ruit  et  fuscis  tellurem  amplectitur  alis." 

But  in  the  words  where  "um,"  "am,"  "em,"  or  a  vowel,  occur,  the 
syllable  is  taken  off  by  elision.  Again,  where  the  line  commences 
with  a  Spondee, 

"Felix  |  qui  potu  |  it  re  |  rum  cog  |  noscere  |  causas." — LUCRETIUS. 
Ergo.    Mr.  Griswold  ought  to  be  happy  in  knowing  his  book  to  be 
the  cause  of  our  review. 

Now,  gentle  reader,  is  Mr.  Griswold  a  versifier? — we  have  not 
touched  him  as  a  Poet, — and  if  not,  and  we  assert  he  is  not,  and  never 
was  able  to  understand  the  first  principles  of  versification,  what  shall 
be  said  of  his  presumption  in  becoming  the  judge  of  a  race  of  men 
whose  simplest  productions  are  beyond  his  comprehension?  We  have 
more  of  his  poetry  (spirits  of  Pope,  Byron,  et  a/.,  forgive  our  desecra 
tion  of  the  name !)  on  hand,  but  in  none  can  we  find  two  correct  con 
secutive  lines,  nor  do  we  wish  to  inflict  them  on  the  reader.  But  we 
have  not  yet  done  with  the  "Sunset  Storm."  Independent  of  its 
worse  than  tyro-like  versification,  it  is  a  heterogeneous  compound  of 
sheer,  naked  nonsense  and  rank  bombast.  We  shall  examine  the  first 
verse,  that  which  we  have  already  submitted  to  scansion,  and  then, 
if  any  one  deems  Mr.  G.  a  competent  judge  of  true  poetry,  we  hope 
he  will  inflict  one  of  his  collections  upon  him  annually.  Now  for  it ! 

"The  summer  sun  has  sunk  to  rest 

Below  the  green-clad  hills, 
And  through  the  skies  careering  fast, 
The  storm-cloud  rides  upon  the  blast, 

And  now  the  rain  distills." 

We  pause  to  credit  Mr.  G.  with  a  new  idea — the  clouds  distilling 
rain.  We  have  heard  of  men  distilling  whiskey,  alcohol,  &c.,  but 
never  before  of  clouds  distilling  rain. 

"The  flash  we  see,  the  peal  we  hear, 
With  winds  blent  in  their  wild  career, 
Till  pains  the  ear." 


APPENDIX  253 

"The  flash"  of  what  do  we  see?  'The  peal"  of  what  do  "we  hear?" 
Is  lightning  and  thunder  to  be  understood,  or  is  it  the  flash  and  peal 
of  the  storm?  If  the  latter  is  meant,  it  is  another  new  idea.  If  the 
former — but  it  is  not  said, — how  can  "winds"  be  "blent  in"  with  a 
flash  of  lightning?  Mr.  G.,  Mr.  G.,  you  are  as  mystical  as  Kant,  and 
as  incomprehensible  as  Wordsworth,  without  possessing  the  slightest 
claim  to  the  common  sense  of  either. 

"It  is  the  voice  of  the  storm-king 
Riding  upon  the  lightning's  wing." 
We  are  now  informed  that  this  "blent  in"  mixture  is 
.  .  .  "the  voice  of  the  Storm-King 
Riding  upon  the  lightning's  wing;" 

and  we  are  happy  to  hear  it.    It  is  no  wonder  dairy-women  complain 
of  their  milk  being  curdled  the  morning  after  a  storm. 

"Leading  his  bannered's  hosts  along  the  sky, 
And  drenching  with  his  floods  the  sterile  lands  and  dry." 

Is  this  even  good  grammar?  Is  it  "the  voice"  or  "the  Storm-King" 
"leading  his  banner'd  hosts  along  the  sky' '  ?  Tell  us  that ! 

Did  any  one  ever  read  such  nonsense?  We  never  did,  and  shall 
hereafter  eschew  everything  that  bears  Rufus  Wilmot  Griswold's 
name,  as  strongly  as  the  Moslemite  the  forbidden  wine,  or  the  Jew 
the  "unmentionable  flesh."  But  we  must  say,  ere  we  leave  the  "Sun 
set  Storm,"  that,  with  the  exception  of  Mathews'  "Wakondah,"  Pop 
Emmons'  "Fredoniad,"  and  some  portions  of  Hoffman's  "Vigil  of 
Faith,"  the  world  never  even  saw  such  balderdash. 

We  defined  Poetry  "to  be  the  rhythmical  personification  of  existing 
or  ideal  beauty" ;  and  here  we  shall  give  a  vivid  example  of  our  idea, 
an  example  which  even  Mr.  Griswold  acknowledges  "to  possess  a 
statue-like  definitiveness  and  warmth  of  coloring."  It  is  the  "SLEEP 
ING  BEAUTY,"  by  Tennyson, — the  most  perfect  conception  of  loveli 
ness  we  ever  saw,  or  ever  expect  to  see,  and  had  Tennyson  written 
nothing  else,  it  would  have  made  him  immortal. 

"Year  after  year  unto  her  feet, 

(She  lying  on  her  couch  alone,) 
Along  the  purple  coverlet 

The  maiden's  jet-black  hair  has  grown; 
On  either  side  her  tranced  form 


254  APPENDIX 

Forth  streaming  from  a  braid  of  pearl; 
The  slumbrous  light  is  rich  and  warm, 
And  moves' not  on  the  rounded  curl. 

The  silk,  star-broider'd  coverlet 

Unto  her  limbs  itself  doth  mould 
Languidly  ever;  and,  amid 

The  full  black  ringlets  downward  rolled, 
Clows  forth  each  softly-shadowed  arm 

With  bracelets  of  the  diamond  bright; 
Her  constant  beauty  doth  inform 

Stillness  with  love,  and  day  with  light. 

She  sleeps!  her  breathings  are  not  heard, 

In  palace  chambers  far  apart, 
The  fragrant  tresses  are  not  stirred 

That  lie  upon  her  charmed  heart. 
She  sleeps!  on  either  hand  up  swells, 

The  gold-fringd  pillow  lightly  prest: 
She  sleeps,  nor  dreams,  but  ever  dwells, 

A  perfect  form,  in  perfect  rest." 

In  the  first  place,  this  is  a  legitimate  subject  of  poerty,  finished 
with  the  highest  artistical  skill,  burning  with  genius  and  ideality,  and 
secondly  it  conveys  to  the  mind  in  the  very  title  that  richest  image  of 
loveliness — a  sleeping  woman!  Words  cannot  convey  our  conception 
of  its  beauty,  nor  our  homage  to  the  genius  of  its  author.  The  itali 
cized  lines  are  the  finest  passages. 

Now  for  Mr.  Griswold's  critical  powers.  We  shall  quote  some  few 
passages  from  one  of  his  latest  reviews,  and  that  on  the  works  of  the 
author  of  the  Charmed  Sleeper, — Alfred  Tennyson,  whose  genius  and 
originality  have  excited  the  wonder  and  admiration  of  the  best  critics 
in  Europe,  and  the  imitative  faculties  of  the  principal  poets  of  Amer 
ica.  "His  chief  characteristics  pertaining  to  style,  they  will  not  long 
attract  regard."  Here  we  have  a  gross  grammatical  error — two 
nominatives  to  one  verb,  "characteristics"  and  "they"  to  "will."  "He 
tricks  out  common  thoughts  in  dresses  so  unique  it  is  not  always  easy 
to  identify  them."  (Is  not  this  originality?  yet  in  the  next  portion 
of  the  sentence  we  hear  this  sapient  critic  say,)  "but  we  have  not  seen 
in  his  works  proofs  of  an  original  mind."  (0  temporal  0  mores!  This 
Griswold  says  of  Tennyson!)  Again,  "as  a  versifier,  Holmes  is  equal  to 


APPENDIX  255 

Tennyson,  and  with  the  same  patient  effort  would  every  way  surpass 
him."  (We  advise  Dr.  Holmes,  who  does  possess  some  merit  as  a 
versifier,  to  beg  Mr.  G.  not  to  puff  him,  or  he  may  depend  upon  his 
poems  being  incontinently  d — d.)  "We  desire  none  of  his  compan 
ionship  !"  (Don't  you  hope  you  may  get  it?)  "Him  who  stole  at  first 
hand  from  Keats."  Well,  if  this  is  not  the  height  of  assurance  we 
don't  know  what  assurance  is,  coming  as  it  dpes  from  one  of  the  most 
clumsy  of  literary  thieves,  and  who,  in  his  wildest  aspirations,  never 
even  dreamed  of  an  original  thought.  A  man  who  does  not  under 
stand  the  first  principles  of  versification,  the  author  of  the  "Sunset 
Storm" ;  and  to  speak  thus  of  such  a  man  as  Tennyson,  the  author  of 
the  Sleeping  Beauty  we  have  just  quoted!  We  can  only  say  to  Mr. 
Griswold,  Jove  protect  us*  from  his  reviewing,  and  the  public  from 
what  he  deems  exquisite.  These  remarks  are  from  a  man  whose  ex 
travagant  praise  of  Puffer  Hopkins,  one  of  the  most  abortive  emana 
tions  ever  issued  from  an  American  press,  has  been  the  daily  ridicule 
of  the  whole  community,  and  even  of  his  own  most:  intimate  friends. 
A  book  which  he  stamps  "as  original,"  which  is  the  most  palpable 
imitation  of  Boz's  style,  and  like  all  imitations,  only  so  upon  the 
surface,  wanting  anything  like  genuine  wit,  pathos,  or  profundity, 
whose  serious  passages  are  extremely  ridiculous,  and  whose  comic 
wonderfully  tragic. 

Now  for  the  Book!  the  "POETS  AND  POETRY  OF  AMERICA."  As  re 
gards  its  typography  and  execution,  it  is  very,  very  neat,  and  the  lines 
around  give  a  compactness  and  finish  perfectly  desirable  to  the  ap 
pearance  of  its  pages. 

Let  us  commence  with  the  delectable  matter  which  constitutes 
Mr.  Griswold's  original  portion  of  the  "Poets  of  America."  In  the 
first  place  we  have  the  preface. 

"It  is  said  that  the  principles  of  our  fathers  are  beginning  to  be  re 
garded  with  indifference."  Who  has  said  this,  Mr.  G.  ?  Is  the  name  or 
the  principles  of  a  Washington  or  Jefferson  beginning  to  be  obliterated 
in  our  hearts?  Does  not  every  American's  bosom  burn  when  he  reads 
their  names,  or  hears  them  promulgated  from  the  rostrum?  And  the 
bursting  huzzas  from  every  lip  at  such  a  moment  as  the  last,  how  well 
they  speak  that  "the  principles  of  our  fathers  are  beginning  to  be 
regarded  with  indifference."  Is  "love  of  country  decaying,  and  are 
"the  affections  of  our  people  in  that  transition  state  from  the  simplicity 
of  Democracy  to  the  gilded  shows  of  Aristocratic  government  T '  Perish  the 
scandal!  "Our  national  tastes  and  feelings  are  fashioned  by  the  subject 
of  kings"  Are  we  to  understand  this  as  a  poetical  license  or  not,  for 


256  APPENDIX 

with  these  facts  staring  us  in  the  face  we  cannot  but  imagine  you've 
told  a  good  many  poetical  lies  since  you  have  been  in  the  business? 
If — and  you  assert  it  in  set  round  terms — you  think  so,  you  are  wrong. 
They  are  not  so ;  at  least  by  the  majority,  though  they  may  be  by  the 
foolish  few  miscalled  "the  first  circle  of  society!" — the  worshippers  of 
an  Ellsler,  a  Morpeth,  or  an  Ashburton,  whose  only  merit  is  their 
wealth,  and  whose  intellects  rarely  expand  beyond  the  cut  of  a  coat 
or  the  fashion  of  a  mantilla .  After  reading  such  opinions  promulgated, 
who  can  think  our  compiler  a  fit  man  to  judge  of  American  poetry, 
even  had  he  possessed  the  competency.  But  Mr.  G.  is  going  to 
Europe,  and  there  his  opinions  will  meet  with  support. 

Let  us  proceed.  Ah!  what  have  we  here?  "The •creation  of  beauty, 
the  manifestation  of  the  real  by  the  ideal,  in  words  that  move  in  metrical 
array,  is  poetry"  Now  what  is  this  but  a  direct  amplification  by  our 
poet,  of  the  definition  of  poetry — "the  rhythmical  creation  of  beauty" — 
which  appeared  in  Mr.  Poe's  critique  on  Professor  Longfellow's  bal 
lads,  from  which  we  know,  and  he  knows,  he  stole  it. 

Well,  we  have  looked  over  the  book,  and  we  find  it  just  such  a  re 
sult  as  might  be  anticipated.  The  biographies  are  miserably  written, 
and  as  to  the  criticisms  on  style,  they  are  certainly  not  critiques 
raisonnes,  and  that  simply  because  reason  and  thinking  are  entirely 
out  of  Mr.  G.'s  sphere.  As  to  the  different  degrees  of  merit  allotted  to 
each  author,  we  cannot  help  thinking  it  possible,  but  we  will  not  say 
it,  that  sub  rosa  arrangements  were  made,  and  a  proportionable 
quantity  of  fame  allotted,  in  consideration  of  the  quid  pro  quo  re 
ceived.  Besides,  the  whole  work  is  not  even  a  specimen  of  the  Poets 
and  Poetry  of  America;  and  in  giving  it  our  unqualified  condemna 
tion,  we  only  cite  the  opinion  of  all,  even  to  the  Poets  who  have  been 
so  unfortunate  as  to  figure  in  its  pages,  and  we  are  satisfied  our  review 
will  be  met  with  vivas  wherever  the  book  has  been  seen  or  read. 

Now  we  want  to  know  one  thing:  Is  writing  Poetry  the  exclusive 
privilege  of  the  aristocracy  of  our  country?  for  we  are  so  led  to  imagine 
by  finding  no  poor  writers  in  this  work.  No !  They  are  all *  'descended 
from  ancient  and  honored  families,"  "the  sons  of  wealthy  members  of 
the  Society  of  Friends,"  or  of  "eminent  lawyers,"  or  "wealthy  mer 
chants,"  "wealthy  lawyers,"  themselves,  &c.,  8zc.,ad  infinitum.  How 
comes  this?  It  is  answered  in  a  word.  Mr.  G.  belongs  to  the  class 
called  "toady";  and  as  he  is  very  ambitious  of  one  day  acquiring 
a  position,  can  have  no  fellow-feeling  for  the  class  he  would  leave 
behind  him.  To  this,  and  this  alone,  (and  Mr.  G.  knows  we  speak — 
and  it  is  as  unpleasant  for  us  to  say  as  it  is  for  him  to  hear  it — the 


APPENDIX  257 

truth,)  two  thirds  of  the  poets  owe  even  the  transitory  reputation  they 
have  acquired  in  this  miserable  book.  And  now  that  we  feel  in  the 
vein,  we  shall  propound  to  Mr.  Griswold  a  few  questions.  Why  was 
Robert  Tyler,  the  author  of  Ahasuerus,  &c.,  omitted?  Why  was 
Frederick  W.  Thomas  insulted  with  a  place  as  the  author  of  one  song, 
among  the  miscellaneous  writers,  after  his  having  been  written  to, 
and  "his  biography  and  best  articles"  solicited?  Was  it  not  because 
he  did  not  obey  your  dictatorial  and  impertinent  request  to  write  for 
you  the  biography  of  Mrs.  Welby?  Answer  us  that,  Mr.  Griswold! 
How  comes  it  that  C.  Fenno  Hoffman  is  the  greatest  poet  in  America, 
and  that  his  articles  figure  more  than  two  to  one  over  Bryant,  and 
ten  to  one  over  Lowell,  Longfellow,  6zc.  ?  Why  were  Edward  Everett, 
LL.D.,  John  Quincy  Adams,  Samuel  Woodworth,  (the  insult  might 
have  been  spared  the  dying  poet,)  Robert  M.  Bird,  M.  D.,  J.  K. 
Mitchell,  M.  D.,  Sarah  G.  Hale,  George  P.  Morris,  Rev.  William  B. 
Tappan,  Catharine  H.  Esling  (or  Miss  Waterman,  as  she  is  better 
known),  Horace  Greeley,  Seba  Smith,  Charles  West  Thompson,  Rev. 
Charles  W.  Everest,  Lieut.  G.  W.  Patten,  William  Wallace  (author 
of  the  Star  Lyra,  &c.),  Mrs.  Francis  S.  Osgood  (one  of  our  sweetest 
poetesses),  James  N.  Barker,  &c.,  &zc.,  classed  under  the  head  of 
"various  authors,"  thereby  throwing  openly  the  charge  of  their  in- 
competency  to  sustain  the  name  of  Poets,  and  implying  that  they 
were  only  occasional  scribblers?  (This,  and  of  such  men,  is  again 
from  Rufus  Wilmot  Griswold!) 

Are  there  no  such  persons  in  existence  as  Anna  Cora  Mowatt, 
Lydia  J.  Pierson,  Juliet  H.  Lewis,  Mrs.  Harriet  Muzzy,  Mrs.  E.  S. 
Stedman,  &zc.?  And  if  so,  have  they  never  written  poetry?  And  if 
they  have,  why  are  they  omitted? 

Shame  on  such  black  injustice,  which  is  made  the  blacker  by  im 
posing  men,  of  whom  no  one  ever  heard  out  of  their  own  parlors, 
upon  the  public  as  poets,  and  that  above  their  superiors  in  genius, 
talent,  artistical  skill,  and  brilliant  flow  of  ideality  and  language! 

Again,  how  came  you  to  alter  Dr.  J.  K.  Mitchell's  song  in  such  a 
manner  that  the  author  scarcely  knows  his  own  production?  Just 
think  of  the  impudence  of  the  thing — Rufus  Wilmot  Griswold  alter 
ing  a  production  of  Dr.  J.  K.  Mitchell !  And  now  that  we  are  in  our 
own  city,  has  it  no  poets?  Are  Dr.  Mitchell,  C.  West  Thompson,  and 
Catharine  H.  Esling  only  worthy  to  appear  in  one  article  in  your 
contemptible  appendix?  Where  is  the  Hon.  Robert  T.  Conrad?  You 
surely  could  not  have  forgotten  him,  for  his  "Aylmere"  has  been  the 
most  successful  of  American  Tragedies,  and  he  is  the  author  of  some  of 


258  APPENDIX 

the  finest  poems  known  in  American  literature.  Where  is  Professor 
Walter,  Morton  McMichael,  Robert  Morris  (another  sweet  poet), 
the  Rev.  T.  H.  Stockton,  and  Dr.  English?  How  came  you  to  forget 
Mr.  Spear,  who  was  once  placed  by  the  Courier,  if  we  remember 
aright,  close  to  Shakspeare,  and  somewhere  between  Cowper  and 
Goldsmith?  We  might  name  others.  However,  all  these  gentlemen 
should  be  gratified  at  their  non-appearance  in  the  volume  before  us, 
for  if  ever  such  a  thing  as  literary  ruin  existed,  or  exists,  nine  tenths 
of  the  Poets  (!)  of  America  are  ruined  forever  by  the  praise  of  Mr. 
Griswold !  This  is  our  unvarnished  opinion ;  and  as  we  have  estab 
lished  the  fact  of  our  knowing  something  of  Poetry  and  its  concomi 
tants,  and  that  Mr.  Griswold  is  as  ignorant  of  it  and  them  as  a 
Kikapoo  Indian,  we  fancy  it  will  pass  for  current  coin. 

But  to  close  this  affair.  Had  Mr.  Griswold  the  genius  of  a  Shakes 
peare,  the  powers  of  a  Milton,  or  the  critical  learning  of  a  Macaulay, 
he  could  not  stem  the  torrent  of  animadversion  this  book  has  raised; 
but  must  be  overwhelmed  by  the  tide  of  public  disapprobation  which 
has  set  in  so  strongly  upon  him;  but  as  he  has  neither  the  one  nor  the 
other,  what  will  be  his  fate?  Forgotten,  save  only  by  those  whom  he 
has  injured  and  insulted,  he  will  sink  into  oblivion,  without  leaving  a 
landmark  to  tell  that  he  once  existed;  or,  if  he  is  spoken  of  hereafter, 
he  will  be  quoted  as  the  unfaithful  servant  who  abused  his  trust. 


APPENDIX  B 

GRAHAM'S  REPLY  TO  THE 

OBITUARY  THAT  APPEARED  IN  THE  "NEW  YORK 
TRIBUNE"  SIGNED  "LUDWIG" 

Reprinted  from  "Graham's  Magazine,"  March,  1850 

My  Dear  Willis,— 

In  an  article  of  yours  which  accompanies  the  two  beautiful 
volumes  of  the  writings  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  you  have  spoken  with 
so  much  truth  and  delicacy  of  the  deceased,  and,  with  the  magical 
touch  of  genius,  have  called  so  warmly  up  before  me  the  memory 
of  our  lost  friend  as  you  and  I  both  seem  to  have  known  him,  that 
I  feel  warranted  in  addressing  to  you  the  few  plain  words  I  have 
to  say  in  defence  of  his  character  as  set  down  by  Mr.  Griswold. 

Although  the  article,  it  seems,  appeared  originally  in  the  New 
York  Tribune,  it  met  my  eye  for  the  first  time  in  the  volumes 
before  me.  I  now  purpose  to  take  exception  to  it  in  the  most 
public  manner.  I  knew  Mr.  Poe  well,  far  better  than  Mr.  Gris 
wold;  and  by  the  memory  of  old  times,  when  he  was  an  editor 
of  "Graham,"  I  pronounce  this  exceedingly  ill-timed  and  un- 
appreciative  estimate  of  the  character  of  our  lost  friend,  unfair 
and  untrue.  It  is  Mr.  Poe  as  seen  by  the  writer  while  laboring  under 
a  fit  of  the  nightmare,  but  so  dark  a  picture  has  no  resemblance  to 
the  living  man.  Accompanying  these  beautiful  volumes,  it  is  an 
immortal  infamy,  the  death's  head  over  the  entrance  to  the  garden 
of  beauty,  a  horror  that  clings  to  the  brow  of  morning,  whispering 
of  murder.  It  haunts  the  memory  through  every  page  of  his  writ 
ings,  leaving  upon  the  heart  a  sensation  of  utter  gloom,  a  feeling 
almost  of  terror.  The  only  relief  we  feel  is  in  knowing  that  it  is  not 
true,  that  it  is  a  fancy  sketch  of  a  perverted,  jaundiced  vision. 
The  man  who  could  deliberately  say  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  in  a 
notice  of  his  life  and  writings  prefacing  the  volumes  which  were 
to  become  a  priceless  souvenir  to  all  who  loved  him,  that  his 
death  might  startle  many,  "but  that  few  would  be  grieved  by  it," 
and  blast  the  whole  fame  of  the  man  by  such  a  paragraph  as  fol 
lows,  is  a  judge  dishonored.  He  is  not  Mr.  Poe's  peer,  and  I 
challenge  him  before  the  country  even  as  a  juror  in  the  case: 


260  APPENDIX 

"His  harsh  experience  had  deprived  him  of  all  faith  in  man  or  woman.  He 
had  made  up  his  mind  upon  the  numberless  complexities  of  the  social  world,  and 
the  whole  system  with  him  was  an  imposture.  This  conviction  gave  a  direction  to 
his  shrewd  and  naturally  unamiable  character.  Still,  though  he  regarded  society 
as  composed  altogether  of  villains,  the  sharpness  of  his  intellect  was  not  of  that 
kind  which  enabled  him  to  cope  with  villainy,  while  it  continually  caused  him, 
by  overshots,  to  fail  of  the  success  of  honesty.  He  was  in  many  respects  like 
Francis  Vivian  in  Bulwer's  novel  of  'The  Caxtons.'  Passion,  in  him,  comprehended 
many  of  the  worst  emotions  which  militate  against  human  happiness.  You  could 
not  contradict  him,  but  you  raised  quick  choler;  you  could  not  speak  of  wealth, 
but  his  cheek  paled  with  gnawing  envy.  The  astonishing  natural  advantages  of  this 
poor  boy, — his  beauty,  his  readiness,  the  daring  spirit  that  breathed  around  him 
like  a  fiery  atmosphere,  had  raised  his  constitutional  self-confidence  into  an 
arrogance  that  turned  his  very  claims  to  admiration  into  prejudices  against  him. 
Irascible,  envious,  bad  enough,  but  not  the  worst,  for  these  salient  angles  were  all 
varnished  over  with  a  cold,  repellant  cynicism ;  his  passions  vented  themselves  in 
sneers.  There  seemed  to  him  no  moral  susceptibility;  and,  what  was  more  remark 
able  in  a  proud  nature,  little  or  nothing  of  the  true  point  of  honor.  He  had,  to  a 
morbid  excess,  that  desire  to  rise  which  is  vulgarly  called  ambition,  but  no  wish 
for  the  esteem  or  the  love  of  his  species;  only  the  hard  wish  to  succeed, — not 
shine,  nor  serve, — succeed,  that  he  might  have  the  right  to  despise  a  world  which 
galled  his  self-conceit." 

Now  this  is  dastardly,  and,  what  is  worse,  it  is  false.  It  is  very 
adroitly  done,  with  phrases  very  well  turned,  and  with  gleams  of 
truth  shining  out  from  a  setting  so  dusky,  as  to  look  devilish. 
Mr.  Griswold  does  not  feel  the  worth  of  the  man  he  has  under 
valued;  he  had  no  sympathies  in  common  with  him,  and  has 
allowed  old  prejudices  and  old  enmities  to  steal,  insensibly  per 
haps,  into  the  coloring  of  his  picture.  They  were  for  years  totally 
uncongenial,  if  not  enemies,  and  during  that  period  Mr.  Poe,  in  a 
scathing  lecture  upon  "The  Poets  of  America,"  gave  Mr.  Gris 
wold  some  raps  over  the  knuckles  of  force  sufficient  to  be  remem 
bered.  He  had,  too,  in  the  exercise  of  his  functions  as  critic,  put 
to  death  summarily  the  literary  reputation  of  some  of  Mr.  Gris- 
wold's  best  friends;  and  their  ghosts  cried  in  vain  for  him  to 
avenge  them  during  Poe's  lifetime;  and  it  almost  seems  as  if  the 
present  hacking  at  the  cold  remains  of  him  who  struck  them  down, 
is  a  sort  of  compensation  for  duty  long  delayed,  for  reprisal  long 
desired,  but  deferred.  But  without  this,  the  opportunities  afforded 
Mr.  Griswold  to  estimate  the  character  of  Poe  occurred,  in  the 
main,  after  his  stability  had  been  wrecked,  his  whole  nature  in  a 
degree  changed,  and  with  all  his  prejudices  aroused  and  active. 
Nor  do  I  consider  Mr.  Griswold  competent,  with  all  the  opportuni 
ties  he  may  have  cultivated  or  acquired,  to  act  as  his  judge,  to 


APPENDIX  261 

dissect  that  subtle  and  singularly  fine  intellect,  to  probe  the  mo 
tives  and  weigh  the  actions  of  that  proud  heart.  His  whole  nature, 
that  distinctive  presence  of  the  departed,  which  now  stands  im 
palpable,  yet  in  strong  outline  before  me,  as  I  knew  him  and  felt 
him  to  be,  eludes  the  rude  grasp  of  a  mind  so  warped  and  uncon 
genial  as  Mr.  Griswold's. 

But  it  may  be  said,  my  dear  Willis,  that  Mr.  Poe  himself  deputed 
him  to  act  as  his  literary  executor,  and  that  he  must  have  felt 
some  confidence,  in  his  ability  at  least,  if  not  in  his  integrity,  to 
perform  the  functions  imposed,  with  discretion  and  honor.  I  do 
not  purpose,  now,  to  enter  into  any  examination  of  the  appoint 
ment  of  Mr.  Griswold,  nor  of  the  wisdom  of  his  appointment,  to 
the  solemn  trust  of  handing  the  fair  fame  of  the  deceased,  unim 
paired,  to  that  posterity  to  which  the  dying  poet  bequeathed  his 
legacy,  but  simply  to  question  its  faithful  performance.  Among 
the  true  friends  of  Poe  in  this  city — and  he  had  some  such  here — 
there  are  those,  I  am  sure,  that  he  did  not  class  among  villains; 
nor  do  they  feel  easy  when  they  see  their  old  friend  dressed  out,  in 
his  grave,  in  the  habiliments  of  a  scoundrel.  There  is  something 
to  them  in  this  mode  of  procedure  on  the  part  of  the  literary 
executor  that  does  not  chime  in  with  their  notions  of  "the  true 
point  of  honor."  They  had  all  of  them  looked  upon  our  departed 
friend  as  singularly  indifferent  to  wealth  for  its  own  sake,  but  as 
very  positive  in  his  opinions  that  the  scale  of  social  merit  was  not 
of  the  highest;  that  mind,  somehow,  was  apt  to  be  left  out  of  the 
estimate  altogether;  and,  partaking  somewhat  of  his  free  way  of 
thinking,  his  friends  are  startled  to  find  they  have  entertained 
very  unamiable  convictions.  As  to  his  "quick  choler"  when  he  was 
contradicted,  it  depended  a  good  deal  upon  the  party  denying,  as 
well  as  upon  the  subject  discussed.  He  was  quick,  it  is  true,  to 
perceive  mere  quacks  in  literature,  and  somewhat  apt  to  be  hasty 
when  pestered  with  them;  but  upon  most  other  questions  his 
natural  amiability  was  not  easily  disturbed.  Upon  a  subject  that 
he  understood  thoroughly,  he  felt  some  right  to  be  positive,  if  not 
arrogant,  when  addressing  pretenders.  His  "astonishing  natural 
advantages"  had  been  very  assiduously  cultivated;  his  "daring 
spirit"  was  the  anointed  of  genius;  his  self-confidence  the  proud 
conviction  of  both;  and  it  was  with  something  of  a  lofty  scorn 
that  he  attacked,  as  well  as  repelled,  a  crammed  scholar  of  the 
hour,  who  attempted  to  palm  upon  him  his  ill-digested  learning. 
Literature  with  him  was  religion;  and  he,  its  high  priest,  with  a 


262  APPENDIX 

whip  of  scorpions,  scourged  the  money-changers  from  the  temple. 
In  all  else,  he  had  the  docility  and  kind-heartedness  of  a  child. 
No  man  was  more  quickly  touched  by  a  kindness,  none  more 
prompt  to  return  for  an  injury.  For  three  or  four  years  I  knew 
him  intimately,  and  for  eighteen  months  saw  him  almost  daily, 
much  of  the  time  writing  or  conversing  at  the  same  desk,  knowing 
all  his  hopes,  his  fears,  and  little  annoyances  of  life,  as  well  as  his 
high-hearted  struggle  with  adverse  fate;  yet  he  was  always  the 
same  polished  gentleman,  the  quiet,  unobtrusive,  thoughtful 
scholar,  the  devoted  husband,  frugal  in  his  personal  expenses, 
punctual  and  unwearied  in  his  industry,  and  the  soul  of  honor  in 
all  his  transactions.  This,  of  course,  was  in  his  better  days,  and 
by  them  we  judge  the  man.  But  even  after  his  habits  had  changed, 
there  was  no  literary  man  to  whom  I  would  more  readily  advance 
money  for  labor  to  be  done.  He  kept  his  accounts,  small  as  they 
were,  with  the  accuracy  of  a  banker.  I  append  an  account  sent  to 
me  in  his  own  hand,  long  after  he  had  left  Philadelphia,  and  after 
all  knowledge  of  the  transactions  it  recited  had  escaped  my  mem 
ory.  I  had  returned  him  the  story  of  "The  Gold  Bug,"  at  his  own 
request,  as  he  found  that  he  could  dispose  of  it  very  advanta 
geously  elsewhere : — 

We  were  square  when  I  sold  you  the  "Versification"  article,  for  which  you 

gave  me,  first,  $25,  and  afterwards  $7 — in  all $32  00 

Then  you  bought  "The  Gold  Bug"  for 52  00 

I  got  both  these  back,  so  that  I  owed $84.00 

You  lent  Mrs.  Clemm 12  50 

Making  in  all $96  50 

The  review  of  "Flaccus"  was  3  3-4  pp.,  which,  at  $4,is      .       .       $1 5  00 

Lowell's  poem  is 10  00 

The  review  of  Charming,  4  pp. ,  is  $  1 6,  of  which  I  got  $6,  leaving       1 0  00 
The  review  of  Halleck,  4  pp.,  is  $16,  of  which  I  got  $10,  leaving        6  00 

The  review  of  Reynolds,  2  pp 8  00 

The  review  of  Longfellow,  5  pp.,  is  $20,  of  which  I  got  $10,  leaving  10  00 

So  that  I  have  paid  in  all 59  00 

Which  leaves  still  due  by  me $37  50 

This,  I  find,  was  his  uniform  habit  with  others  as  well  as  myself, 
carefully  recalling  to  mind  his  indebtedness  with  the  fresh  article 
sent.  And  this  is  the  man  who  had  "no  moral  susceptibility/'  and 
little  or  nothing  of  the  "true  point  of  honor."  It  may  be  a  very 
plain  business  view  of  the  question,  but  it  strikes  his  friends  that  it 
may  pass  as  something,  as  times  go. 


APPENDIX  263 

I  shall  never  forget  how  solicitous  of  the  happiness  of  his  wife 
and  mother-in-law  he  was  whilst  one  of  the  editors  of  "Graham's 
Magazine;"  his  whole  efforts  seemed  to  be  to  procure  the  comfort 
and  welfare  of  his  home.  Except  for  their  happiness,  and  the 
natural  ambition  of  having  a  magazine  of  his  own,  I  never  heard 
him  deplore  the  want  of  wealth.  The  truth  is,  he  cared  little  for 
money,  and  knew  less  of  its  value,  for  he  seemed  to  have  no  per 
sonal  expenses.  What  he  received  from  me,  in  regular  monthly 
instalments,  went  directly  into  the  hands  of  his  mother-in-law 
for  family  comforts,  and  twice  only  I  remember  his  purchasing 
some  rather  expensive  luxuries  for  his  house,  and  then  he  was 
nervous  to  the  degree  of  misery  until  he  had,  by  extra  articles, 
covered  what  he  considered  an  imprudent  indebtedness.  His  love 
for  his  wife  was  a  sort  of  rapturous  worship  of  the  spirit  of  beauty 
which  he  felt  was  fading  before  his  eyes.  I  have  seen  him  hovering 
around  her  when  she  was  ill,  with  all  the  fond  fear  and  tender 
anxiety  of  a  mother  for  her  first-born,  her  slightest  cough  causing 
in  him  a  shudder,  a  heart-chill  that  was  visible.  I  rode  out,  one 
summer  evening,  with  them,  and  the  remembrance  of  his  watch 
ful  eyes  eagerly  bent  upon  the  slightest  change  of  hue  in  that  loved 
face  haunts  me  yet  as  the  memory  of  a  sad  strain.  It  was  the 
hourly  anticipation  of  her  loss  that  made  him  a  sad  and  thought 
ful  man,  and  lent  a  mournful  melody  to  his  undying  song. 

It  is  true,  that  later  in  life  Poe  had  much  of  those  morbid  feel 
ings  which  a  life  of  poverty  and  disappointment  is  so  apt  to  en 
gender  in  the  heart  of  man — the  sense  of  having  been  ill-used,  mis 
understood,  and  put  aside  by  men  of  far  less  ability,  and  of  none, 
which  preys  upon  the  heart  and  clouds  the  brain  of  many  a  child 
of  song.  A  consciousness  of  the  inequalities  of  life,  and  of  the 
abundant  power  of  mere  wealth,  allied  even  to  vulgarity,  to  over 
ride  all  distinctions,  and  to  thrust  itself,  bedaubed  with  dirt  and 
glittering  with  tinsel,  into  the  high  places  of  society,  and  the 
chief  seats  of  the  synagogue ;  whilst  he,  a  worshipper  of  the  beau 
tiful  and  true,  who  listened  to  the  voices  of  angels  and  held  de 
lighted  companionship  with  them  as  the  cold  throng  swept  dis 
dainfully  by  him,  was  often  in  danger  of  being  thrust  out,  house 
less,  homeless,  beggared,  upon  the  world,  with  all  his  fine  feelings 
strung  to  a  tension  of  agony  when  he  thought  of  his  beautiful  and 
delicate  wife,  dying  hourly  before  his  eyes.  What  wonder  that  he 
then  poured  out  the  vials  of  a  long-treasured  bitterness  upon  the 
injustice  and  hollo wness  of  all  society  around  him. 


264  APPENDIX 

The  very  natural  question  "Why  did  he  not  work  and  thrive?" 
is  easily  answered.  It  will  not  be  asked  by  the  many  who  know  the 
precarious  tenure  by  which  literary  men  hold  a  mere  living  in  this 
country.  The  avenues  through  which  they  can  profitably  reach 
the  country  are  few,  and  crowded  with  aspirants  for  bread,  as  well 
as  fame.  The  unfortunate  tendency  to  cheapen  every  literary  work 
to  the  lowest  point  of  beggarly  flimsiness  in  price  and  profit,  pre 
vents  even  the  well-disposed  from  extending  anything  like  an 
adequate  support  to  even  a  part  of  the  great  throng  which  genius, 
talent,  education,  and  even  misfortune,  force  into  the  struggle. 
The  character  of  Poe's  mind  was  of  such  an  order  as  not  to  be  very 
widely  in  demand.  The  class  of  educated  mind  which  he  could 
readily  and  profitably  address  was  small — the  channels  through 
which  he  could  do  so  at  all  were  few — and  publishers  all,  or  nearly 
all,  contented  with  such  pens  as  were  already  engaged,  hesitated 
to  incur  the  expense  of  his  to  an  extent  which  would  sufficiently 
remunerate  him ;  hence,  when  he  was  fairly  at  sea,  connected  per 
manently  with  no  publication,  he  suffered  all  the  horrors  of  pro 
spective  destitution,  with  scarcely  the  ability  of  providing  for 
immediate  necessities;  and  at  such  moments,  alas!  the  tempter 
often  came,  and  as  you  have  truly  said,  "one  glass"  of  wine  made 
him  a  madman.  Let  the  moralist,  who  stands  upon  "tufted  carpet," 
and  surveys  his  smoking  board,  the  fruits  of  his  individual  toil  or 
mercantile  adventure,  pause  before  he  let  the  anathema,  tremb 
ling  upon  his  lips,  fall  upon  a  man  like  Poe,  who,  wandering  from 
publisher  to  publisher,  with  his  fine,  print-like  manuscript, 
scrupulously  clean  and  neatly  rolled,  finds  no  market  for  his  brain 
— with  despair  at  heart,  misery  ahead,  for  himself  and  his  loved 
ones,  and  gaunt  famine  dogging  at  his  heels,  thus  sinks  by  the  way 
side,  before  the  demon  that  watches  his  steps  and  whispers 
oblivion.  Of  all  the  miseries  which  God,  or  his  own  vices,  inflict 
upon  man,  none  are  so  terrible  as  that  of  having  the  strong  and 
willing  arm  struck  down  to  a  childlike  inefficiency,  while  the  Heart 
and  the  Will  have  the  purpose  of  a  giant's  out-doing.  We  must 
remember,  too,  that  the  very  organization  of  such  a  mind  as  that 
of  Poe — the  very  tension  and  tone  of  his  exquisitely  strung  nerves 
— the  passionate  yearnings  of  his  soul  for  the  beautiful  and  true, 
utterly  unfitted  him  for  the  rude  jostlings  and  fierce  competitor- 
ship  of  trade.  The  only  drafts  of  his  that  could  be  honored  were 
those  upon  his  brain.  The  unpeopled  air — the  caverns  of  ocean — 
the  decay  and  mystery  that  hang  around  old  castles — the  thunder 


APPENDIX  265 

of  wind  through  the  forest  aisles — the  spirits  that  rode  the  blast, 
by  all  but  him  unseen,  and  the  deep,  metaphysical  creations 
which  floated  through  the  chambers  of  his  soul — were  his  only 
wealth,  the  High  Change  where  only  his  signature  was  valid  for 
rubies. 

Could  he  have  stepped  down  and  chronciled  small  beer,  made 
himself  the  shifting  toady  of  the  hour,  and,  with  bow  and  cringe, 
hung  upon  the  steps  of  greatness,  sounding  the  glory  of  third-rate 
ability  with  a  penny  trumpet,  he  would  have  been  feted  alive,  and 
perhaps  been  praised  when  dead.  But,  no!  his  views  of  the  duty  of 
the  critic  were  stern,  and  he  felt  that  in  praising  an  unworthy 
writer  he  committed  dishonor.  His  pen  was  regulated  by  the 
highest  sense  of  duty.  By  a  keen  analysis  he  separated  and  studied 
each  piece  which  the  skilful  mechanist  had  put  together.  NO  part, 
however  insignificant  or  apparently  unimportant,  escaped  the 
rigid  and  patient  scrutiny  of  his  sagacious  mind.  The  unfitted 
joint  proved  the  bungler — the  slightest  blemish  was  a  palpable 
fraud.  He  was  the  scrutinizing  lapidary,  who  detected  and  exposed 
the  most  minute  flaw  in  diamonds.  The  gem  of  first  water  shone 
the  brighter  for  the  truthful  setting  of  his  calm  praise.  He  had  the 
finest  touch  of  soul  for  beauty — a  delicate  and  hearty  appreciation 
of  worth.  If  his  praise  appeared  tardy,  it  was  of  priceless  value 
when  given.  It  was  true  as  well  as  sincere.  It  was  the  stroke  of 
honor  that  at  once  knighted  the  receiver.  It  was  in  the  world  of 
mind  that  he  was  king;  and,  with  a  fierce  audacity,  he  felt  and  pro 
claimed  himself  autocrat.  As  critic,  he  was  despotic,  supreme. 
Yet  no  man  with  more  readiness  would  soften  a  harsh  expression 
at  the  request  of  a  friend,  or  if  he  himself  felt  that  he  had  infused 
too  great  a  degree  of  bitterness  into  his  article,  none  would  more 
readily  soften  it  down  after  it  was  in  type — though  still  maintain 
ing  the  justness  of  his  critical  views.  I  do  not  believe  that  he  wrote 
to  give  pain;  but  in  combating  what  he  conceived  to  be  error,  he 
used  the  strongest  word  that  presented  itself,  even  in  conversation. 
He  labored  not  so  much  to  reform  as  to  exterminate  error,  and 
thought  the  shortest  process  was  to  pull  it  up  by  the  roots. 

He  was  a  worshipper  of  intellect — longing  to  grasp  the  power  of 
mind  that  moves  the  stars — to  bathe  his  soul  in  the  dreams  of 
seraphs.  He  was  himself  all  ethereal,  of  a  fine  essence,  that  moved 
in  an  atmosphere  of  spirits,of  spiritual  beauty,  overflowing  and 
radiant — twin-brother  with  the  angels,  feeling  their  flashing  wings 
upon  his  heart,  and  almost  clasping  them  in  his  embrace.  Of  them, 


266  APPENDIX 

and  as  an  expectant  archangel  of  that  high  order  of  intellect, 
stepping  out  of  himself,  as  it  were,  and  interpreting  the  time  he 
revelled  in  delicious  luxury  in  a  world  beyond,  with  an  audacity 
which  we  fear  in  madmen,  but  in  genius  worship  as  the  inspiration 
of  heaven. 

But  my  object,  in  throwing  together  a  few  thoughts  upon  the 
chracter  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  was  not  to  attempt  an  elaborate 
criticism,  but  to  say  what  might  palliate  grave  faults  that  have 
been  attributed  to  him  and  to  meet  by  facts  unjust  accusation; 
in  a  word,  to  give  a  mere  outline  of  the  man  as  he  lived  before  me. 
I  think  I  am  warranted  in  saying  to  Mr  Griswold  that  he  must 
review  his  decision.  It  will  not  stand  the  calm  scrutiny  of  his  own 
judgment,  or  of  time,  while  it  must  be  regarded  by  all  the  friends 
of  Mr.  Poe  as  an  ill-judged  and  misplaced  calumny  upon  that 
gifted  son  of  genius. 

Yours  truly, 

Geo.  R.  Graham. 
Philadelphia,  February  2,  1850. 

To  N.  P.  Willis,  Esq. 


APPENDIX  C 

GRISWOLD'S  "MEMOIR"OF  POE 

PUBLISHED  IN  "THE  LITERATI,"  THE  THIRD  VOLUME 
OF  POE'S  COMPLETE  WORKS,  WITH  "PREFACE" 

NOTE :  Regarding  the  following  letters  Griswold  asserts  Poe  wrote 
him,  and  that  he  published  as  proof  of  their  friendship,  Woodbury, 
who  edited  the  Poe-Griswold  MSS.  states:  "Of  these  letters  two 
originals  only  were  among  the  Griswold  MSS.  and  both  varied 
materially  from  the  printed  text." 

PREFACE 

Hitherto  I  have  not  written  or  published  a  syllable  upon  the  subject  of  Mr. 
Poe's  life,  character,  or  genius,  since  I  was  informed,  some  ten  days  after  his 
death,  of  my  appointment  to  be  his  literary  executor.  I  did  not  suppose  I  was 
debarred  from  the  expression  of  any  feelings  or  opinions  in  the  case  by  the  accept 
ance  of  this  office,  the  duties  of  which  I  regarded  as  simply  the  collection  of  his 
works,  and  their  publication,  for  the  benefit  of  the  rightful  inheritors  of  his 
property,  in  a  form  and  manner  that  would  probably  have  been  most  agreeable 
to  his  own  wishes.  I  would  gladly  have  declined  a  trust  imposing  so  much  labor, 
for  I  had  been  compelled  by  ill  health  to  solicit  the  indulgence  of  my  publishers, 
who  had  many  thousand  dollars  invested  in  an  unfinished  work  under  my  direc 
tion;  but  when  I  was  told  by  several  of  Mr.  Poe's  most  intimate  friends — among 
others  by  the  family  of  S.  D.  Lewis,  Esq.,  to  whom  in  his  last  years  he  was  under 
greater  obligations  than  to  any  or  to  all  others — that  he  had  long  been  in  the 
habit  of  expressing  a  desire  that  in  the  event  of  his  death  I  should  be  his  editor, 
I  yielded  to  the  apparent  necessity,  and  proceeded  immediately  with  the  prepara 
tion  of  the  two  volumes  which  have  heretofore  been  published.   But  I  had,  at 
the  request  of  the  Editor  of  "The  Tribune,"  written  hastily  a  few  paragraphs 
about  Mr.  Poe,  which  appeared  in  that  paper  with  the  telegraphic  communi 
cation  of  his  death ;  and  two  or  three  of  these  paragraphs  having  been  quoted 
by  Mr.  N.  P.  Willis,  in  his  Notice  of  Mr.  Poe,  were  as  a  part  of  that  Notice 
unavoidably  reprinted  in  the  volume  of  the  deceased  author's  Tales.  And  my 
unconsidered  and  imperfect,  but,  as  every  one  who  knew  its  subject  readily 
perceived,  very  kind  article,  was  now  vehemently  attacked.  A  writer  under  the 
signature  of  "George  R.  Graham,"  in  a  sophomorical  and  trashy  but  widely 
circulated  Letter,  denounced  it  as  "the  fancy  sketch  of  a  jaundiced  vision," 
"an  immortal  infamy,"  and  its  composition  a  "breach  of  trust"  And  to  excuse 
his  five  months'  silence,  and  to  induce  a  belief  that  he  did  not  know  that  what 
I  had  written  was  already  published  before  I  could  have  been  advised  that  I  was 
to  be  Mr.  Poes  executor,  (a  condition  upon  which  all  the  possible  force  of  his 
Letter  depends,)  this  silly  and  ambitious  person,  while  represented  as  enter- 


268  APPENDIX 

taining  a  friendship  really  passionate  in  its  tenderness  for  the  poor  author, 
(of  whom  in  four  years  of  his  extremest  poverty  he  had  not  purchased  for  his 
magazine  a  single  line, )  is  made  to  say  that  in  half  a  year  he  had  not  seen  so  notice 
able  an  article, — though  within  a  week  after  Mr.  Poe's  death  it  appeared  in 
The  Tribune,  in  The  Home  Journal,  in  three  of  the  daily  papers  of  his  own  city, 
and  in  The  Saturday  Evening  Post,  of  which  he  was  or  had  been  himself  one  of 
the  chief  proprietors  and  editors!  And  Mr.  John  Neal,  too,  who  had  never  had 
even  the  slightest  personal  acquaintance  with  Poe  in  his  life,  rushes  from  a  sleep 
which  the  public  had  trusted  was  eternal,  to  declare  that  my  characterization 
of  Poe  (which  he  is  pleased  to  describe  as  "poetry,  exalted  poetry,  poetry  of 
astonishing  and  original  strength")  is  false  and  malicious,  and  that  I  am  a  "calumi- 
niator,"  a  "Rhadamanthus,"  etc.  Both  these  writers — John  Neal  following  the 
author  of  the  Letter  signed  "George  R.  Graham" — not  only  assume  what  I 
have  shown  to  be  false,  (that  the  remarks  on  Poe's  character  were  written  by 
me  as  his  executor,)  but  that  there  was  a  long,  intense,  and  implacable  enmity 
betwixt  Poe  and  myself,  which  disqualified  me  for  the  office  of  his  biographer. 
This  scarcely  needs  an  answer  after  the  poet's  dying  request  that  I  should  be 
his  editor;  but  the  manner  in  which  it  has  been  urged,  will,  I  trust,  be  a  sufficient 
excuse  for  the  following  demonstration  of  its  absurdity 

My  acquaintance  with  Mr.  Poe  commenced  in  the  spring  of  1841.  He  called 
at  my  hotel,  and  not  finding  me  at  home,  left  two  letters  of  introduction.  The 
next  morning  I  visited  him,  and  we  had  a  long  conversation  about  literature  and 
literary  men,  pertinent  to  the  subject  of  a  book,  "The  Poets  and  Poetry  of  Amer 
ica,"  which  I  was  then  preparing  for  the  press.  The  following  letter  was  sent  to 
me  a  few  days  afterwards  : 

Philadelphia,  March  29. 

R.  W,  Griswold,  Esq. :  My  Dear  Sir: — On  the  other  leaf  I  send  such  poems  as  I 
think  my  best,  from  which  you  can  select  any  which  please  your  fancy.  I  should 
be  proud  to  see  one  or  two  of  them  in  your  book.  The  one  called  "The  Haunted 
Palace"  is  that  of  which  I  spoke  in  reference  to  Professor  Longfellow's  plagiarism. 
I  first  published  the  "H.  P."  in  Brooks 's  "Museum,"  a  monthly  journal  at  Balti 
more,  now  dead.  Afterwards,  I  embodied  it  in  a  tale  called  "The  House  of  Usher," 
in  Burton's  magazine.  Here  it  was,  I  suppose,  that  Professor  Longfellow  saw  it ; 
for,  about  six  weeks  afterwards,  there  appeared  in  the  "Southern  Literary  Mes 
senger"  a  poem  by  him  called  "The  Beleaguered  City,"  which  may  now  be  found 
in  his  volume.  The  identity  in  title  is  striking;  for  by  "The  Haunted  Palace" 
I  mean  to  imply  a  mind  haunted  by  phantoms — a  disordered  brain — and  by  the 
"Beleaguered  City"  Prof.  L.  means  just  the  same.  But  the  whole  tournure  of  the 
poem  is  based  upon  mine,  as  you  will  see  at  once.  Its  allegorical  conduct,  the 
style  of  its  versification  and  expression — all  are  mine.  As  I  understood  you  to  say 
that  you  meant  to  preface  each  set  of  poems  by  some  biographical  notice,  I  have 
ventured  to  send  you  the  above  memoranda — the  particulars  of  which  (in  a  case 
where  an  author  is  so  little  known  as  myself)  might  not  be  easily  obtained  else 
where.  "The  Coliseum"  was  the  prize  poem  alluded  to. 

With  high  respect  and  esteem,  I  am  your  obedient  servant, 

Edgar  A.  Poe. 

The  next  is  without  date : 

My  Dear  Sir  — I  made  use  of  your  name  with  Carey  &  Hart,  for  a  copy  of  your 
book,  and  am  writing  a  review  of  it,  which  I  shall  send  to  Lowell  for  "The  Pioneer." 


APPENDIX  269 

I  like  it  decidedly.  It  is  of  immense  importance,  as  a  guide  to  what  we  have  done: 
but  you  have  permitted  your  good  nature  to  influence  you  to  a  degree :  I  would 
have  omitted  at  least  a  dozen  whom  you  have  quoted,  and  I  can  think  of  five  or 
six  that  should  have  been  in.  But  with  all  its  faults — you  see  I  am  perfectly  frank 
with  you — it  is  a  better  book  than  any  other  man  in  the  United  States  could  have 
made  of  the  materials.  This  I  will  say. 

With  high  respect,  I  am  your  obedient  servant, 

Edgar  A.  Poe. 
The  next  refers  to  some  pecuniary  matters : 

Philadelphia,  June  11,  1843. 

DearGriswold: — Can  you  not  send  me  $5.1  am  sick,  and  Virginia  is  almost  gone. 
Come  and  see  me.  Peterson  says  you  suspect  me  of  a  curious  anonymous  letter. 
I  did  not  write  it,  but  bring  it  along  with  you  when  you  make  the  visit  you 
promised  to  Mrs.  Clemm.  I  will  try  to  fix  that  matter  soon.  Could  you  do  anything 
with  my  note? 

Yours  truly,  E.  A.  P. 

We  had  no  further  correspondence  for  more  thanayear.  In  this  period  he  delivered 
a  lecture  upon  "The  Poets  and  Poetry  of  America,"  in  which  my  book  under  that 
title  was,  I  believe,  very  sharply  reviewed.  In  the  meantime  advertisement  was 
made  of  my  intention  to  publish  "The  Prose  Writers  of  America,"  and  I  received, 
one  day,  just  as  I  was  leaving  Philadelphia  for  New- York,  the  following  letter: 

New- York,  Jan.  10,  1845. 

Rev.  Rufus  W.  Griswold:  Sir — I  perceive  by  a  paragraph  in  the  papers,  that 
your  "Prose  Writers  of  America"  is  in  press.  Unless  your  opinions  of  my  literary 
character  are  entirely  changed,  you  will,  I  think,  like  something  of  mine,  and  you 
are  welcome  to  whatever  best  pleases  you,  if  you  will  permit  me  to  furnish  a  cor 
rected  copy;  but  with  your  present  feelings  you  can  hardly  do  me  justice  in  any 
criticism,  and  I  shall  be  glad  if  you  will  simply  say  after  my  name:  "Born  1811; 
published  Tales  of  the  Grotesque  and  the  Arabesque  in  1839;  has  resided  latterly 
in  New- York."  Your  obedient  servant,  Edgar  A.  Poe. 

I  find  my  answer  to  this  among  his  papers: 

Philadelpnia,  Jan.  11,  1845. 

Sir: — Although  I  have  some  cause  of  quarrel  with  you,  as  you  seem  to  re 
member,  I  do  not  under  any  circumstances  permit,  as  you  have  repeatedly 
charged,  my  personal  relations  to  influence  the  expression  of  my  opinions  as  a 
critic.  By  the  inclosed  proof-sheets  of  what  I  had  written  before  the  reception  of 
your  note,  you  will  see  that  I  think  quite  as  well  of  your  works  as  I  did  when  I 
had  the  pleasure  of  being  Your  friend,  R.  W.  Griswold. 

This  was  not  mailed  until  the  next  morning;  I  however  left  Philadelphia  the 
same  evening,  and  in  the  course  of  the  following  day  Poe  and  myself  met  in  the 
office  of  "The  Tribune,"  but  without  any  recognition.  Soon  after  he  received  my 
note,  he  sent  the  following  to  my  hotel : 

New- York,  Jan.  16,  1845. 

DearGriswold — If  you  will  permit  me  to  call  you  so — your  letter  occasioned  me 
first  pain  and  then  pleasure :  pain,  because  it  gave  me  to  see  that  I  had  lost,  through 


270  APPENDIX 

my  own  folly,  an  honorable  friend; — pleasure,  because  I  saw  in  it  a  hope  of 
reconciliation.  I  have  been  aware,  for  several  weeks,  that  my  reasons  for  speaking 
of  your  book  as  I  did  (of  yourself  I  have  always  spoken  kindly),  were  based  in  the 
malignant  slanders  of  a  mischief-maker  by  profession.  Still,  as  I  supposed  you 
irreparably  offended,  I  could  make  no  advances  when  we  met  at  the  "Tribune" 
office,  although  I  longed  to  do  so.  I  know  of  nothing  which  would  give  me  more 
sincere  pleasure  than  your  accepting  these  apologies,  and  meeting  me  as  a  friend. 
If  you  can  do  this,  and  forget  the  past,  let  me  know  where  I  shall  call  on  you — or 
come  and  see  me  at  the  "Mirror"  office,  any  morning  about  ten.  We  can  then  talk 
over  the  other  matters,  which,  to  me  at  least,  are  far  less  important  than  your 
good  will.  Very  truly  yours,  Edgar  A.  Poe. 

His  next  letter  is  dated  February  24,  1845 : 

My  dear  Griswold: — A  thousand  thanks  for  your  kindness  in  the  matter  of  those 
books,  which  I  could  not  afford  to  buy,  and  had  so  much  need  of.  Soon  after 
seeing  you,  I  sent  you,  through  Zieber,  all  my  poems  worth  republishing,  and  I 
presume  they  reached  you.  I  was  sincerely  delighted  with  what  you  said  of  them, 
and  if  you  will  write  your  criticism  in  the  form  of  a  preface,  I  shall  be  greatly 
obliged  to  you.  I  say  this  not  because  you  praised  me ;  everybody  praises  me  now : 
but  because  you  so  perfectly  understand  me,  or  what  I  have  aimed  at,  in  all  my 
poems;  I  did  not  think  you  had  so  much  delicacy  of  appreciation  joined  with  your 
strong  sense ;  I  can  say  truly  that  no  man's  approbation  gives  me  so  much  pleasure. 
I  send  you  with  this  another  package,  also  through  Zieber,  by  Burgess  &  Stringer. 
It  contains,  in  the  way  of  essay,  "Mesmeric  Revelation,"  which  I  would  like  to 
have  go  in,  even  if  you  have  to  omit  the  "House  of  Usher."  I  send  also  corrected 
copies  of  (in  the  way  of  funny  criticism,  but  you  don't  like  this)  "Flaccus,"  which 
conveys  a  tolerable  idea  of  my  style;  and  of  my  serious  manner  "Barnaby  Rudge" 
is  a  good  specimen.  In  the  tale  line,  "The  Murders  of  the  Rue  Morgue,"  "The 
Gold  Bug,"  and  "The  Man  that  was  Used  Up," — far  more  than  enough,  but  you 
can  select  to  suit  yourself.  I  prefer  the  "G.  B."  to  the  "M.  in  the  R.  M."  I  have 
taken  a  third  interest  in  the  "Broadway  Journal,"  and  will  be  glad  if  you  could 
send  me  anything  for  it.  Why  not  let  me  anticipate  the  book  publication  of  your 
splendid  essay  on  Milton? 

Truly  yours,  Poe. 

The  next  is  without  date : 

Dear  Griswold: — I  return  the  proofs  with  many  thanks  for  your  attentions.  The 
poems  look  quite  as  well  in  the  short  metres  as  in  the  long  ones,  and  I  am  quite 
content  as  it  is.  In  "The  Sleeper"  you  have  "Forever  with  unclosed  eye"  for 
"Forever  with  unopen'd  eye."  Is  it  possible  to  make  the  correction?  I  presume 
you  understand  that  in  the  repetition  of  my  Lecture  on  the  Poets,  (in  N.Y.)  I  left 
out  all  that  was  offensive  to  yourself.  I  am  ashamed  of  myself  that  I  ever  said 
anything  of  you  that  was  so  unfriendly  or  so  unjust ;  but  what  I  did  say  I  am  con 
fident  has  been  misrepresented  to  you.  See  my  notice  of  C.  F.  Hoffman's  (?) 
sketch  of  you.  Very  sincerely  yours,  Poe. 

On  the  twenty-sixth  of  October,  1845,  he  wrote: 

My  dear  Griswold: — Will  you  aid  me  at  a  pinch — at  one  of  the  greatest  pinches 
conceivable?  If  you  will,  I  will  be  indebted  to  you  for  life.  After  a  prodigious  deal 
of  manoeuvering,  I  have  succeeded  in  getting  the  "Broadway  Journal"  entirely 


APPENDIX  271 

within  my  own  control.  It  will  be  a  fortune  to  me  if  I  can  hold  it — and  I  can  do  it 
easily  with  a  very  trifling  aid  from  my  friends.  May  I  count  you  as  one?  Lend  me 
$50,  and  you  shall  never  have  cause  to  regret  it.  Truly  yours,  Edgar  A.  Poe. 

And  on  the  first  of  November : 

My  dearCriswold: — Thank  you  for  the  $25.  And  since  you  will  allow  me  to  draw 
upon  you  for  the  other  half  of  what  I  asked,  if  it  shall  be  needed  at  the  end  of  a 
month,  I  am  just  as  grateful  as  if  it  were  all  in  hand, — for  my  friends  here  have 
acted  generously  by  me.  Don't  have  any  more  doubts  of  my  success.  I  am,  by  the 
way,  preparing  an  article  about  you  for  the  B.  J .,  in  which  I  do  you  justice — which 
is  all  you  can  ask  of  any  one.  Ever  truly  yours,  Edgar  A.  Poe. 

The  next  is  without  date,  but  appears  to  have  been  written  early  in  1849: 
Dear  Griswold: — Your  uniform  kindness  leads  me  to  hope  that  you  will  attend 

to  this  little  matter  of  Mrs.  L ,  to  whom  I  truly  think  you  have  done  less  than 

justice.    I  am  ashamed  to  ask  favors  of  you,  to  whom  I  am  so  much  indebted,  but 

I  have  promised  Mrs.  L this.  They  lied  to  you,  (if  you  told what  he  says 

you  told  him,)  upon  the  subject  of  my  forgotten  Lecture  on  the  American  Poets, 
and  I  take  this  opportunity  to  say  that  what  I  have  always  held  in  conversations 
about  you,  and  what  I  believe  to  be  entirely  true,  as  far  as  it  goes,  is  contained 
in  my  notice  of  your  "Female  Poets  of  America,"  in  the  forthcoming  "Southern 
Literary  Messenger."  By  glancing  at  what  I  have  published  about  you,  (Aut.  in 
Graham,  1841;  Review  in  Pioneer,  1843;  notice  in  B.  Journal,  1845;  Letter  in 
Int.,  1847;  and  the  Review  of  your  Female  Poets,)  you  will  see  that  I  have  never 
hazarded  my  own  reputation  by  a  disrespectful  word  of  you,  though  there  were, 

as  I  long  ago  explained,  in  consequence  of 's  false  imputation  of  that  beastly 

article  to  you,  some  absurd  jokes  at  your  expense  in  the  Lecture  at  Philadelphia. 
Come  up  and  see  me:  the  cars  pass  within  a  few  rods  of  the  New- York  Hotel, 
where  I  have  called  two  or  three  times  without  finding  you  in. 

Yours  truly,          Poe. 

I  soon  after  visited  him  at  Fordham,  and  passed  two  or  three  hours  with  him. 
The  only  letter  he  afterward  sent  me — at  least  the  only  one  now  in  my  possession 
— follows : 

Dear  Griswold — I  inclose  perfect  copies  of  the  lines  "For  Annie"  and  "Annabel 
Lee,"  in  hopes  that  you  may  make  room  for  them  in  your  new  edition.  As  regards 
"Lenore,"  (which  you  were  kind  enough  to  say  you  would  insert,)  I  would  prefer 
the  concluding  stanza  to  run  as  here  written.  .  .  .  It  is  a  point  of  no  great 
importance,  but  in  one  of  your  editions  you  have  given  my  sister's  age  instead  of 
mine.  I  was  born  in  Dec.  1813;  my  sister,  Jan.  1811.  [The  date  of  his  birth  to 
which  he  refers  was  printed  from  his  statement  in  the  memoranda  referred  to 
in  the  first  of  the  letters  here  printed. — R.  W.  G.]  Willis,  whose  good  opinion  I 
value  highly,  and  of  whose  good  word  I  have  a  right  to  be  proud,  has  done  me 
the  honor  to  speak  very  pointedly  in  praise  of  "The  Raven."  I  inclose  what  he 
said,  and  if  you  could  contrive  to  introduce  it,  you  would  render  me  an  essential 
favor,  and  greatly  further  my  literary  interests,  at  a  point  where  I  am  most 
anxious  they  should  be  advanced.  Truly  yours,  E.  A.  Poe. 

P.  S. — Considering  my  indebtedness  to  you,  can  you  not  sell  to  Graham  or  to 


272  APPENDIX 

Godey  (with  whom,  you  know,  I  cannot  with  the  least  self-respect  again  have 
anything  to  do  directly) — can  you  not  sell  to  one  of  these  men,  "Annabel  Lee," 
say  for  $50,  and  credit  me  that  sum.  Either  of  them  could  print  it  before  you  will 
need  it  for  your  book.  Mem.  The  Eveleth  you  ask  about  is  a  Yankee  impertinent, 
who,  knowing  my  extreme  poverty,  has  for  years  pestered  me  with  unpaid  letters ; 
but  I  believe  almost  every  literary  man  of  any  note  has  suffered  in  the  same  way. 
I  am  surprised  that  you  have  escaped.  Poe. 

These  are  all  the  letters  (unless  I  have  given  away  some  notes  of  his  to  auto 
graph  collectors)  ever  received  by  me  from  Mr.  Poe.  They  are  a  sufficient  answer 
to  the  article  by  John  Neal,  and  to  that  under  the  signature  of  "George  R. 
Graham,"  which  have  induced  their  publication.  I  did  not  undertake  to  dispose 
of  the  poem  of  "Annabel  Lee,"  but  upon  the  death  of  the  author  quoted  it  in 
the  notice  of  him  in  The  Tribune,  and  I  was  sorry  to  learn  soon  after  that  it  had 
been  purchased  and  paid  for  by  the  proprietors  of  both  Sartain's  Magazine,  and 
The  Southern  Literary  Messenger. 

New  York,  September  2,  1850.  R.W.G. 


MEMOIR 

The  family  of  EDGAR  A.  POE  was  one  of  the  oldest  and  most  reput 
able  in  Baltimore.  David  Poe,  his  paternal  grandfather,  was  a 
Quartermaster-General  in  the  Maryland  line  during  the  Revolution, 
and  the  intimate  friend  of  Lafayette,  who,  during  his  last  visit  to  the 
United  States,  called  personally  upon  the  General's  widow,  and  ten 
dered  her  acknowledgments  for  the  services  rendered  to  him  by  her 
husband.  His  great-grandfather,  John  Poe,  married  in  England, 
Jane,  a  daughter  of  Admiral  James  McBride,  noted  in  British  naval 
history,  and  claiming  kindred  with  some  of  the  most  illustrious 
English  families.  His  father,  David  Poe,  Jr.,  the  fourth  son  of  the 
Quartermaster-General,  was  several  years  a  law  student  in  Baltimore, 
but  becoming  enamored  of  an  English  actress,  named  Elizabeth 
Arnold,  whose  prettiness  and  vivacity  more  than  her  genius  for  the 
stage  made  her  a  favorite,  he  eloped  with  her,  and  after  a  short  period, 
having  married  her,  became  himself  an  actor.  They  continued  six 
or  seven  years  in  the  theatres  of  the  principal  cities,  and  finally  died, 
within  a  few  weeks  of  each  other,  in  Richmond,  leaving  three  children, 
Henry,  Edgar,  and  Rosalie,  in  utter  destitution. 

Edgar  Poe,  who  was  born  in  Baltimore,  in  January,  1811,  was  at 
this  period  of  remarkable  beauty,  and  precocious  wit.  Mr.  John 
Allan,  a  merchant  of  large  fortune  and  liberal  disposition,  who  had 
been  intimate  with  his  parents,  having  no  children  of  his  own,  adopted 
him,  and  it  was  generally  understood  among  his  acquaintances  that 


APPENDIX  273 

he  intended  to  make  him  the  heir  of  his  estate.  The  proud,  nervous 
irritability  of  the  boy's  nature  was  fostered  by  his  guardian's  well- 
meant  but  ill-judged  indulgence.  Nothing  was  permitted  which  could 
"break  his  spirit."  He  must  be  the  master  of  his  masters,  or  not 
have  any.  An  eminent  and  most  estimable  gentleman  of  Richmond 
has  written  to  me,  that  when  Poe  was  only  six  or  seven  years  of  age, 
he  went  to  a  school  kept  by  a  widow  of  excellent  character,  to  whom 
was  committed  the  instruction  of  the  children  of  some  of  the  principal 
families  in  the  city.  A  portion  of  the  grounds  was  used  for  the  culti 
vation  of  vegetables,  and  its  invasion  by  her  pupils  strictly  forbidden. 
A  trespasser,  if  discovered,  was  commonly  made  to  wear,  during  school 
hours,  a  turnip  or  carrot,  or  something  of  this  sort,  attached  to  his 
neck  as  a  sign  of  disgrace.  On  one  occasion  Poe,  having  violated  the 
rules,  was  decorated  with  the  promised  badge,  which  he  wore  in  sullen- 
ness  until  the  dismissal  of  the  boys,  when,  that  the  full  extent  of  his 
» wrong  might  be  understood  by  his  patron,  of  whose  sympathy  he 
was  confident,  he  eluded  the  notice  of  the  schoolmistress,  who  would 
have  relieved  him  of  his  esculent,  and  made  the  best  of  his  way  home, 
with  it  dangling  at  his  neck.  Mr.  Allan's  anger  was  aroused,  and  he 
proceeded  instantly  to  the  school-room,  and  after  lecturing  the  aston 
ished  dame  upon  the  enormity  of  such  an  insult  to  his  son  and  to 
himself,  demanded  his  account,  determined  that  the  child  should  not 
again  be  subjected  to  such  tyranny.  Who  can  estimate  the  effect  of 
this  puerile  triumph  upon  the  growth  of  that  morbid  self-esteem 
which  characterized  the  author  in  after  life? 

In  1816,  he  accompanied  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Allan  to  Great  Britain, 
visited  the  most  interesting  portions  of  the  country,  and  afterwards 
passed  four  or  five  years  in  a  school  kept  at  Stoke  Newington,  near 
London,  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Bransby.  In  his  tale,  entitled  "William 
Wilson,"  he  has  introduced  a  striking  description  of  this  school  and 
of  his  life  here.  He  says: 

"My  earliest  recollections  of  a  school  life  are  connected  with  a  large,  rambling, 
Elizabethan  house,  in  a  misty-looking  village  of  England,  where  were  a  vast 
number  of  gigantic  and  gnarled  trees,  and  where  all  the  houses  were  excessively 
ancient.  In  truth,  it  was  a  dream-like  and  spirit-soothing  place,  that  venerable 
old  town.  At  this  moment,  in  fancy,  I  feel  the  refreshing  chilliness  of  its  deeply 
shadowed  avenues,  inhale  the  fragrance  of  its  thousand  shrubberies,  and  thrill 
anew  with  undefinable  delight,  at  the  deep  hollow  note  of  the  church-bell,  break 
ing,  each  hour,  with  sullen  and  sudden  roar,  upon  the  stillness  of  the  dusky 
atmosphere  in  which  the  fretted  Gothic  steeple  lay  embedded  and  asleep.  It 
gives  me,  perhaps,  as  much  of  pleasure  as  I  can  now  in  any  manner  experience, 
to  dwell  upon  minute  recollections  of  the  school  and  its  concerns.  Steeped  in 


274  APPENDIX 

misery  as  I  am — misery,  alas!  only  too  real — I  shall  be  pardoned  for  seeking 
relief,  however  slight  and  temporary,  in  the  weakness  of  a  few  rambling  details. 
These,  moreover,  utterly  trivial,  and  even  ridiculous  in  themselves,  assume,  to 
my  fancy,  adventitious  importance,  as  connected  with  a  period  and  a  locality 
when  and  where  I  recognize  the  first  ambiguous  monitions  of  the  destiny  which 
afterwards  so  fully  overshadowed  me.  Let  me  then  remember.  The  house,  I  have 
said,  was  old  and  irregular.  The  grounds  were  extensive,  and  a  high  and  solid 
brick  wall,  topped  with  a  bed  of  mortar  and  broken  glass,  encompassed  the  whole. 
The  prison-like  rampart  formed  the  limit  of  our  domain;  beyond  it  we  saw  but 
thrice  a  week — once  every  Saturday  afternoon,  when,  attended  by  two  ushers, 
we  were  permitted  to  take  brief  walks  in  a  body  through  some  of  the  neighboring 
fields — and  twice  during  Sunday,  when  we  were  paraded  in  the  same  formal 
manner  to  the  morning  and  evening  service  in  the  one  church  of  the  village. 
Of  this  church  the  principal  of  our  school  was  pastor.  With  how  deep  a  spirit 
of  wonder  and  perplexity  was  I  wont  to  regard  him  from  our  remote  pew  in  the 
gallery,  as,  with  step  solemn  and  slow,  he  ascended  the  pulpit!  This  reverend  man, 
with  countenance  so  demurely  benign,  with  robes  so  glossy  and  so  clerically 
flowing,  with  wig  so  minutely  powdered,  so  rigid  and  so  vast, — could  this  be 
he  who,  of  late,  with  sour  visage,  and  in  snuffy  habiliments,  administered,  ferule  in 
hand,  the  Draconian  Laws  of  the  academy.  Oh,  gigantic  paradox,  too  utterly 
monstrous  for  solution!  At  an  angle  of  the  ponderous  wall  frowned  a  more  pon 
derous  gate.  It  was  riveted  and  studded  with  iron  bolts,  and  surmounted  with 
jagged  iron  spikes.  What  impressions  of  deep  awe  did  it  inspire!  It  was  never 
opened  save  for  the  three  periodical  egressions  and  ingressions  already  men 
tioned  ;  then,  in  every  creak  of  its  mighty  hinges,  we  found  a  plenitude  of  mystery 
— a  world  of  matter  for  solemn  remark,  or  for  more  solemn  meditation.  The 
extensive  enclosure  was  irregular  in  form,  having  many  capacious  recesses.  Of 
these,  three  or  four  of  the  largest  constituted  the  play  ground.  It  was  level,  and 
covered  with  fine  gravel.  I  well  remember  it  had  no  trees,  nor  benches,  nor  any 
thing  similar  within  it.  Of  course  it  was  in  the  rear  of  the  house.  In  front  lay  a 
small  parterre,  planted  with  box  and  other  shrubs;  but  through  this  sacred 
division  we  passed  only  upon  rare  occasions  indeed — such  as  a  first  advent  to 
school  or  final  departure  thence,  or  perhaps,  when  a  parent  or  friend  having 
called  for  us,  we  joyfully  took  our  way  home  for  the  Christmas  or  Midsummer 
holidays.  But  the  house! — how  quaint  an  old  building  was  this! — to  me  how 
veritably  a  palace  of  enchantment!  There  was  really  no  end  to  its  windings — to 
its  incomprehensible  subdivisions.  It  was  difficult  at  any  given  time,  to  say  with 
certainty  upon  which  of  its  two  stories  one  happened  to  be.  From  each  room  to 
every  other  there  were  sure  to  be  found  three  or  four  steps  either  in  ascent  or 
descent.  Then  the  lateral  branches  were  innumerable — inconceivable— and  so 
returning  in  upon  themselves,  that  our  most  exact  ideas  in  regard  to  the  whole 
mansion  were  not  very  far  different  from  those  with  which  we  pondered  upon 
infinity.  During  the  five  years  of  my  residence  here,  I  was  never  able  to  ascertain 
with  precision,  in  what  remote  locality  lay  the  little  sleeping  apartment  assigned 
to  myself  and  some  eighteen  or  twenty  other  scholars.  The  school  room  was  the 
largest  in  the  house — I  could  not  help  thinking,  in  the  world.  It  was  very  long, 
narrow,  and  dismally  low,  with  pointed  Gothic  windows  and  a  ceiling  of  oak.  In 
a  remote  and  terror-inspiring  angle  was  a  square  enclosure  of  eight  or  ten  feet, 
comprising  the  sanctum,  'during  hours,'  of  our  principal,  the  Reverend  Dr. 


APPENDIX  275 

Bramsby.  It  was  a  solid  structure,  with  massy  doors,  sooner  than  open  which 
in  the  absence  of  the  'Dominie,'  we  would  all  have  willingly  perished  by  the 
peine  forte  et  dure.  In  other  angles  were  two  other  similar  boxes,  far  less  rever 
enced,  indeed,  but  still  greatly  matters  of  awe.  One  of  these  was  the  pulpit  of 
the  'classical'  usher,  one  of  the  'English  and  mathematical.'  Interspersed  about 
the  room,  crossing  and  recrossing  in  endless  irregularity,  were  innumerable 
benches  and  desks,  black,  ancient,  and  time-worn,  piled  desperately  with  much- 
bethumbed  books,  and  so  beseamed  with  initial  letters,  names  at  full  length, 
grotesque  figures,  and  other  multiplied  efforts  of  the  knife,  as  to  have  entirely 
lost  what  little  of  original  form  might  have  been  their  portion  in  days  long  de 
parted.  A  huge  bucket  with  water  stood  at  one  extremity  of  the  room,  and  a 
clock  of  stupendous  dimensions  at  the  other. 

"Encompassed  by  the  massy  walls  of  this  venerable  academy,  I  passed  yet 
not  in  tedium  or  disgust,  the  years  of  the  third  lustrum  of  my  life.  The  teeming 
brain  of  childhood  requires  no  external  world  of  incident  to  occupy  or  amuse  it ; 
and  the  apparently  dismal  monotony  of  a  school  was  replete  with  more  intense 
excitement  than  my  riper  youth  has  derived  from  luxury,  or  my  full  manhood 
from  crime.  Yet  I  must  believe  that  my  first  mental  development  had  in  it 
much  of  the  uncommon — even  much  of  the  outre.  Upon  mankind  at  large  the 
events  of  very  early  existence  rarely  leave  in  mature  age  any  definite  impression. 
All  is  gray  shadow — a  weak  and  irregular  remembrance — an  indistinct  regather- 
ing  of  feeble  pleasures  and  phantasmagoric  pains.  With  me  this  is  not  so.  In 
childhood  I  must  have  felt  with  the  energy  of  a  man  what  I  now  find  stamped 
upon  memory  in  lines  as  vivid,  as  deep,  and  as  durable  as  the  exergues  of  the 
Carthaginian  medals.  Yet  in  fact — in  the  fact  of  the  world's  view — how  little 
was  there  to  remember.  The  morning's  awakening,  the  nightly  summons  to  bed ; 
the  connings,  the  recitations;  the  periodical  half-holidays  and  perambulations; 
the  play-ground,  with  its  broils,  its  pastimes,  its  intrigues;  these,  by  a  mental 
sorcery  long  forgotten,  were  made  to  involve  a  wilderness  of  sensation,  a  world 
of  rich  incident,  an  universe  of  varied  emotion,  of  excitement  the  most  passionate 
and  spirit-stirring.  "Oh,  le  ban  temps,  que  ce  slecle  defer\" 


In  1822,  he  returned  to  the  United  States,  and  after  passing  a  few 
months  at  an  Academy  in  Richmond,  he  entered  the  University  at 
Charlottesville,  where  he  led  a  very  dissipated  life ;  the  manners  which 
then  prevailed  there  were  extremely  dissolute,  and  he  was  known  as 
the  wildest  and  most  reckless  student  of  his  class;  but  his  unusual 
opportunities,  and  the  remarkable  ease  with  which  he  mastered  the 
most  difficult  studies,  kept  him  all  the  while  in  the  first  rank  for 
scholarship,  and  he  would  have  graduated  with  the  highest  honors, 
had  not  his  gambling,  intemperance,  and  other  vices,  induced  his 
expulsion  from  the  university. 

At  this  period  he  was  noted  for  feats  of  hardihood,  strength  and 
activity,  and  on  one  occasion,  in  a  hot  day  of  June,  he  swam  from 
Richmond  to  Warwick,  seven  miles  and  a  half,  against  a  tide  running 


276  APPENDIX 

probably  from  two  to  three  miles  an  hour.*  He  was  expert  at  fence, 
had  some  skill  in  drawing,  and  was  a  ready  and  eloquent  conver 
sationist  and  declaimer. 

His  allowance  of  money  while  at  Charlottesville  had  been  liberal, 
but  he  quitted  the  place  very  much  in  debt,  and  when  Mr.  Allan  re 
fused  to  accept  some  of  the  drafts  with  which  he  had  paid  losses  in 
gaming,  he  wrote  to  him  an  abusive  letter,  quitted  his  house,  and  soon 
after  left  the  country  with  the  Quixotic  intention  of  joining  the 
Greeks,  then  in  the  midst  of  their  struggle  with  the  Turks.  He  never 
reached  his  destination,  and  we  know  but  little  of  his  adventures  in 
Europe  for  nearly  a  year.  By  the  end  of  this  time  he  had  made  his 
way  to  St.  Petersburgh,  and  our  Minister  in  that  capital,  the  late  Mr. 
Henry  Middleton,  of  South  Carolina,  was  summoned  one  morning  to 
save  him  from  penalties  incurred  in  a  drunken  debauch.  Through 
Mr.  Middleton's  kindness  he  was  set  at  liberty  and  enabled  to  return 
to  this  country. 

His  meeting  with  Mr.  Allan  was  not  very  cordial,  but  that  gentle 
man  declared  himself  willing  to  serve  him  in  any  way  that  should 
seem  judicious;  and  when  Poe  expressed  some  anxiety  to  enter  the 
Military  Academy,  he  induced  Chief  Justice  Marshall,  Andrew 
Stevenson,  General  Scott,  and  other  eminent  persons,  to  sign  an 
application  which  secured  his  appointment  to  a  scholarship  in  that 
institution. 

Mrs.  Allan,  whom  Poe  appears  to  have  regarded  with  much  affec 
tion,  and  who  had  more  influence  over  him  than  any  one  else  at  this 
period,  died  on  the  twenty-seventh  of  February,  1829,  which  I  believe 
was  just  before  Poe  left  Richmond  for  West  Point.  It  has  been 
erroneously  stated  by  all  Poe's  biographers,  that  Mr.  Allan  was  now 
sixty-five  years  of  age,  and  that  Miss  Paterson,  to  whom  he  was  mar 
ried  afterward,  was  young  enough  to  be  his  grand-daughter.  Mr. 
Allan  was  in  his  forty-eighth  year,  and  the  difference  between  his 
age  and  that  of  his  second  wife  was  not  so  great  as  justly  to  attract 
any  observation. 

*This  statement  was  first  printed  during  Mr.  Poe's  life-time,  and  its  truth 
being  questioned  in  some  of  the  journals,  the  following  certificate  was  published 
by  a  distinguished  gentlemen  of  Virginia : 

"I  was  one  of  several  who  witnessed  this  swimming  feat.  We  accompanied 
Mr.  Poe  in  boats.  Messrs.  Robert  Stannard,  John  Lyle,  (since  dead)  Robert 
Saunders,  John  Munford,  I  think,  and  one  or  two  others,  were  also  of  the  party. 
Mr.  P.  did  not  seem  at  all  fatigued,  and  walked  back  to  Richmond  immediately 
after  the  feat — which  was  undertaken  for  a  wager.  "Robert  G.  Cabell." 


APPENDIX  277 

For  a  few  weeks  the  cadet  applied  himself  with  much  assiduity  to 
his  studies,  and  he  became  at  once  a  favorite  with  his  mess  and  with 
the  officers  and  professors  of  the  Academy ;  but  his  habits  of  dissipa 
tion  were  renewed;  he  neglected  his  duties  and  disobeyed  orders;  and 
in  ten  months  from  his  matriculation  he  was  cashiered. 

He  went  again  to  Richmond,  and  was  received  into  the  family  of 
Mr.  Allan,  who  was  disposed  still  to  be  his  friend,  and  in  the  event  of 
his  good  behavior  to  treat  him  as  a  son ;  but  it  soon  became  necessary 
to  close  his  doors  against  him  forever.  According  to  Poe's  own  state 
ment  he  ridiculed  the  marriage  of  his  patron  with  Miss  Paterson, 
and  had  a  quarrel  with  her;  but  a  different  story,  *scarcely  suitable 
for  repetition  here,  was  told  by  the  friends  of  the  other  party.  What 
ever  the  circumstances,  they  parted  in  anger,  and  Mr.  Allan  from 
that  time  declined  to  see  or  in  any  way  to  assist  him.  Mr.  Allan  died 
in  the  spring  of  1834,  in  the  fifty-fourth  year  of  his  age,  leaving 
three  children  to  share  his  property,  of  which  not  a  mill  was  be 
queathed  to  Poe. 

Soon  after  he  left  West  Point,  Poe  had  printed  at  Baltimore  a  small 
volume  of  verses,  ("Al  Aaraaf,"  of  about  four  hundred  lines,  "Tamer 
lane,"  of  about  three  hundred  lines,  with  smaller  pieces,)  and  the 
favorable  manner  in  which  it  was  commonly  referred  to  confirmed  his 
belief  that  he  might  succeed  in  the  profession  of  literature.  The 
contents  of  the  book  appear  to  have  been  written  when  he  was  be 
tween  sixteen  and  nineteen  years  of  age ;  but  though  they  illustrated 
the  character  of  his  abilities  and  justified  his  anticipations  of  success, 
they  do  not  seem  to  me  to  evince,  all  things  considered,  a  very  re 
markable  precocity.  The  late  Madame  d'Ossoli  refers  to  some  of  them 
as  the  productions  of  a  boy  of  eight  or  ten  years,  but  I  believe  there 

*The  writer  of  an  eulogium  upon  the  life  and  genius  of  Mr.  Poe,  in  the  Southern 
Literary  Messenger,  for  March,  1850,  thus  refers  to  this  point  in  his  history : 

"The  story  of  the  other  side  is  different ;  and  if  true,  throws  a  dark  shade  upon 
the  quarrel,  and  a  very  ugly  light  upon  Poe's  character.  We  shall  not  insert  it, 
because  it  is  one  of  those  relations  which  we  think  with  Sir  Thomas  Browne, 
should  never  be  recorded, — being  "verities  whose  truth  we  fear  and  heartily 
wish  there  were  no  truth  therein  ....  whose  relations  honest  minds  do  deprecate. 
For  of  sins  heteroclital,  and  such  as  want  name  or  precedent,  there  is  oft-times 
a  sin  even  in  their  history.  We  desire  no  record  of  enormities:  sins  should  be 
accounted  new.  They  omit  of  their  monstrosity  as  they  fall  from  their  rarity; 
for  men  count  it  venial  to  err  with  their  forefathers,  and  foolishly  conceive  they 

divide  a  sin  in  its  society In  things  of  this  nature,  silence  commendeth 

history :  'tis  the  veniable  part  of  things  lost ;  wherein  there  must  never  arise  a 
Pancirollus,  nor  remain  any  register  but  that  of  hell." 


278  APPENDIX 

is  no  evidence  that  anything  of  his  which  has  been  published  was 
written  before  he  left  the  university.  Certainly,  it  was  his  habit  so 
constantly  to  labor  upon  what  he  had  produced — he  was  at  all  times 
so  anxious  and  industrious  in  revision — that  his  works,  whenever  first 
composed,  displayed  the  perfection  of  his  powers  at  the  time  when 
they  were  given  to  the  press. 

His  contributions  to  the  journals  attracted  little  attention,  and  his 
hopes  of  gaining  a  living  in  this  way  being  disappointed,  he  enlisted 
in  the  army  as  a  private  soldier.  How  long  he  remained  in  the  service 
I  have  not  been  able  to  ascertain.  He  was  recognised  by  officers  who 
had  known  him  at  West  Point,  and  efforts  were  made,  privately,  but 
with  prospects  of  success,  to  obtain  for  him  a  commission,  when  it 
was  discovered  by  his  friends  that  he  had  deserted. 

He  had  probably  found  relief  from  the  monotony  of  a  soldier's  life 
in  literary  composition.  His  mind  was  never  in  repose,  and  without 
some  such  resort  the  dull  routine  of  the  camp  or  barracks  would  have 
been  insupportable.  When  he  next  appears,  he  has  a  volume  of  MS. 
stories,  which  he  desires  to  print  under  the  title  of  "Tales  of  the  Folio 
Club."  An  offer  by  the  proprietor  of  the  Baltimore  "Saturday  Visi- 
ter,"  of  two  prizes,  one  for  the  best  tale  and  one  for  the  best  poem, 
induced  him  to  submit  the  pieces  entitled  "MS.  found  in  a  Bottle," 
"Lionizing,"  "The  Visionary,"  and  three  others,  with  "The  Coli 
seum,"  a  poem,  to  the  committee,  which  consisted  of  Mr.  John  P. 
Kennedy,  the  author  of  "Horse  Shoe  Robinson,"  Mr.  J.  H.  B.  Latrobe, 
and  Dr.  James  H.  Miller.  Such  matters  are  usually  disposed  of  in  a 
very  offhand  way:  Committees  to  award  literary  prizes  drink  to  the 
payer's  health  in  good  wines,  over  unexamined  MSS.,  which  they 
submit  to  the  discretion  of  publishers  with  permission  to  use  their 
names  in  such  a  way  as  to  promote  the  publishers'  advantage.  So 
perhaps  it  would  have  been  in  this  case,  but  that  one  of  the  com 
mittee,  taking  up  a  little  book  remarkably  beautiful  and  distinct  in 
caligraphy,  was  tempted  to  read  several  pages;  and  becoming  inter 
ested,  he  summoned  the  attention  of  the  company  to  the  half-dozen 
compositions  it  contained.  It  was  unanimously  decided  that  the 
prizes  should  be  paid  to  "the  first  of  geniuses  who  had  written  legibly." 
Not  another  MS.  was  unfolded.  Immediately  the  "confidential  en 
velope"  was  opened,  and  the  successful  competitor  was  found  to  bear 
the  scarcely  known  name  of  Poe.  The  committee  indeed  awarded  to 
him  the  premiums  for  both  the  tale  and  the  poem,  but  subsequently 
altered  their  decision,  so  as  to  exclude  him  from  the  second  premium, 
in  consideration  of  his  having  obtained  the  higher  one.  The  prize 


APPENDIX  279 

tale  was  the  "MS.  found  in  a  Bottle."  This  award  was  published 
on  the  twelfth  of  October,  1833.  The  next  day  the  publisher  called 
to  see  Mr.  Kennedy,  and  gave  him  an  account  of  the  author,  which 
excited  his  curiosity  and  sympathy,  and  caused  him  to  request  that 
he  should  be  brought  to  his  office.  Accordingly  he  was  introduced ; 
the  prize-money  had  not  yet  been  paid,  and  he  was  in  the  costume  in 
which  he  had  answered  the  advertisement  of  his  good  fortune.  Thin, 
and  pale  even  to  ghastliness,  his  whole  appearance  indicated  sickness 
and  the  utmost  destitution.  A  well-worn  frock  coat  concealed  the 
absence  of  a  shirt,  and  imperfect  boots  disclosed  the  want  of  hose. 
But  the  eyes  of  the  young  man  were  luminous  with  intelligence  and 
feeling,  and  his  voice  and  conversation  and  manners  all  won  upon  the 
lawyer's  regard.  Poe  told  his  history,  and  his  ambition,  and  it  was 
determined  that  he  should  not  want  means  for  a  suitable  appearance 
in  society,  nor  opportunity  for  a  just  display  of  his  abilities  in  litera 
ture.  Mr.  Kennedy  accompanied  him  to  a  clothing  store,  and  pur 
chased  for  him  a  respectable  suit,  with  changes  of  linen,  and  sent  him 
to  a  bath,  from  which  he  returned  with  the  suddenly  regained  style 
of  a  gentleman. 

His  new  friends  were  very  kind  to  him,  and  availed  themselves  of 
every  opportunity  to  serve  him.  Near  the  close  of  the  year  1834  the 
late  Mr.  T.  W.  White  established  in  Richmond  the  "Southern  Literary 
Messenger."  He  was  a  man  of  much  simplicity,  purity  and  energy  of 
character,  but  not  a  writer,  and  he  frequently  solicited  of  his  acquaint 
ances  literary  assistance.  On  receiving  from  him  an  application  for 
an  article,  early  in  1835,  Mr.  Kennedy,  who  was  busy  with  the  duties 
of  his  profession,  advised  Poe  to  send  one,  and  in  a  few  weeks  he  had 
occasion  to  enclose  the  following  answer  to  a  letter  from  Mr.  White. 

"Baltimore,  April  13,  1835. 

"Dear  Sir:  Poe  did  right  in  referring  to  me.  He  is  very  clever  with  his  pen — 
classical  and  scholarlike.  He  wants  experience  and  direction,  but  I  have  no  doubt 
he  can  be  made  very  useful  to  you.  And,  poor  fellow!  he  is  very  poor.  I  told  him 
to  write  something  for  every  number  of  your  magazine,  and  that  you  might  find 
it  to  your  advantage  to  give  him  some  permanent  employ.  He  has  a  volume  of 

very  bizarre  tales  in  the  hands  of ,  in  Philadelphia,  who  for  a  year  past  has 

been  promising  to  publish  them.  This  young  fellow  is  highly  imaginative,  and  a 
little  given  to  the  terrific.  He  is  at  work  upon  a  tragedy,  but  I  have  turned  him 
to  drudging  upon  whatever  may  make  money,  and  I  have  no  doubt  you  and  he 
will  find  your  account  in  each  other." 

In  the  next  number  of  the  "Messenger"  Mr.  White  announced  that 
Poe  was  its  editor,  or  in  other  words,  that  he  had  made  arrangements 


280  APPENDIX 

with  a  gentleman  of  approved  literary  taste  and  attainments  to  whose 
especial  management  the  editorial  department  would  be  confided, 
and  it  was  declared  that  this  gentleman  would  "devote  his  exclusive 
attention  to  the  work."  Poe  continued,  however,  to  reside  in  Balti 
more,  and  it  is  probable  that  he  was  engaged  only  as  a  general  con 
tributor  and  a  writer  of  critical  notices  of  books.  In  a  letter  to  Mr. 
White,  under  the  date  of  the  thirtieth  of  May,  he  says : 

"In  regard  to  my  critique  of  Mr.  Kennedy's  novel  I  seriously  feel  ashamed  of 
what  I  have  written.  I  fully  intended  to  give  the  work  a  thorough  review,  and 
examine  it  in  detail.  Ill  health  alone  prevented  me  from  so  doing.  At  the  time  I 
made  the  hasty  sketch  I  sent  you,  I  was  so  ill  as  to  be  hardly  able  to  see  the  paper 
on  which  I  wrote,  and  I  finished  it  in  a  state  of  complete  exhaustion.  I  have  not, 
therefore,  done  anything  like  justice  to  the  book,  and  I  am  vexed  about  the 
matter,  for  Mr.  Kennedy  has  proved  himself  a  kind  friend  to  me  in  every  respect, 
and  I  am  sincerely  grateful  to  him  for  many  acts  of  generosity  and  attention. 
You  ask  me  if  I  am  perfectly  satisfied  with  your  course.  I  reply  that  I  am — 
entirely.  My  poor  services  are  not  worth  what  you  give  me  for  them." 

About  a  month  afterward  he  wrote : 

"You  ask  me  if  I  would  be  willing  to  come  on  to  Richmond  if  you  should  have 
occasion  for  my  services  during  the  coming  winter.  I  reply  that  nothing  would 
give  me  greater  pleasure.  I  have  been  desirous  for  some  time  past  of  paying  a 
visit  to  Richmond,  and  would  be  glad  of  any  reasonable  excuse  for  so  doing. 
Indeed  I  am  anxious  to  settle  myself  in  that  city,  and  if,  by  any  chance,  you  hear 
of  a  situation  likely  to  suit  me,  I  would  gladly  accept  it,  were  the  salary  even 
the  merest  trifle.  I  should,  indeed,  feel  myself  greatly  indebted  to  you  if  through 
your  means  I  could  accomplish  this  object.  What  you  say  in  the  conclusion  of 
your  letter,  in  relation  to  the  supervision  of  proof-sheets,  gives  me  reason  to 
hope  that  possibly  you  might  find  something  for  me  to  do  in  your  office.  If  so, 
I  should  be  very  glad — for  at  present  only  a  very  small  portion  of  my  time  is 
employed." 

He  continued  in  Baltimore  till  September.  In  this  period  he  wrote 
several  long  reviewals,  which  for  the  most  part  were  rather  abstracts 
of  works  than  critical  discussions,  and  published  with  others,  "Hans 
Pfaall,"  a  story  in  some  respects  very  similar  to  Mr.  Locke's  cele 
brated  account  of  Herschell's  Discoveries  in  the  Moon.  At  first  he 
appears  to  have  been  ill  satisfied  with  Richmond,  or  with  his  duties, 
for  in  two  or  three  weeks  after  his  removal  to  that  city  we  find  Mr. 
Kennedy  writing  to  him : 

"I  am  sorry  to  see  you  in  such  plight  as  your  letter  shows  you  in.  It  is  strange 
that  just  at  this  time,  when  everybody  is  praising  you,  and  when  fortune  is 
beginning  to  smile  upon  your  hitherto  wretched  circumstances,  you  should  be 
invaded  by  these  blue  devils.  It  belongs,  however,  to  your  age  and  temper  to  be 


APPENDIX  281 

thus  buffeted — but  be  assured,  it  only  wants  a  little  resolution  to  master  the 
adversary  forever.  You  will  doubtless  do  well  henceforth  in  literature,  and  add 
to  your  comforts  as  well  as  to  your  reputation,  which  it  gives  me  great  pleasure 
to  assure  you  is  everywhere  rising  in  popular  esteem." 

But  he  could  not  bear  his  good  fortune.  On  receiving  a  month's 
salary  he  gave  himself  up  to  habits  which  only  necessity  had  restrained 
at  Baltimore.  For  a  week  he  was  in  a  condition  of  brutish  drunken 
ness,  and  Mr.  White  dismissed  him.  When  he  became  sober,  however, 
he  had  no  resource  but  in  reconciliation,  and  he  wrote  letters  and  in 
duced  acquaintances  to  call  upon  Mr.  White  with  professions  of 
repentance  and  promises  of  reformation.  With  his  usual  considerate 
and  judicious  kindness  that  gentleman  answered  him : 

"Afy  dear  Edgar:  I  cannot  address  you  in  such  language  as  this  occasion  and 
my  feelings  demand :  I  must  be  content  to  speak  to  you  in  my  plain  way.  That 
you  are  sincere  in  all  your  promises  I  firmly  believe.  But  when  you  once  again 
tread  these  streets,  I  have  my  fears  that  your  resolutions  will  fail,  and  that  you 
will  again  drink  till  your  senses  are  lost.  If  you  rely  on  your  strength  you  are 
gone.  Unless  you  look  to  your  Maker  for  help  you  will  not  be  safe.  How  much  I 
regretted  parting  from  you  is  known  to  Him  only  and  myself.  I  had  become 
attached  to  you;  I  am  still;  and  I  would  willingly  say  return,  did  not  a  knowledge 
of  your  past  life  make  me  dread  a  speedy  renewal  of  our  separation.  If  you 
would  make  yourself  contented  with  quarters  in  my  house,  or  with  any  other 
private  family,  where  liquor  is  not  used,  I  should  think  there  was  some  hope 
for  you.  But,  if  you  go  to  a  tavern,  or  to  any  place  where  it  is  used  at  table, 
you  are  not  safe.  You  have  fine  talents,  Edgar,  and  you  ought  to  have  them 
respected,  as  well  as  yourself.  Learn  to  respect  yourself,  and  you  will  soon  find 
that  you  are  respected.  Separate  yourself  from  the  bottle,  and  from  bottle  com 
panions,  forever.  Tell  me  if  you  can  and  will  do  so.  If  you  again  become  an  assist 
ant  in  my  office,  it  must  be  understood  that  all  engagements  on  my  part  cease 
the  moment  you  get  drunk.  I  am  your  true  friend.  T.  W.  W." 

A  new  contract  was  arranged,  but  Poe's  irregularities  frequently 
interrupted  the  kindness  and  finally  exhausted  the  patience  of  his 
generous  though  methodical  employer,  and  in  the  number  of  the 
"Messenger"  for  January,  1837,  he  thus  took  leave  of  its  readers: 

"Mr.  Poes  attention  being  called  in  another  direction,  he  will  decline,  with  the 
present  number,  the  editorial  duties  of  the  Messenger.  His  Critical  Notices  for 
this  month  end  with  Professor  Anthon's  Cicero — what  follows  is  from  another 
hand.  With  the  best  wishes  to  the  magazine,  and  to  its  few  foes  as  well  as  many 
friends,  he  is  now  desirous  of  bidding  all  parties  a  peaceful  farewell." 

While  in  Richmond,  with  an  income  of  but  five  hundred  dollars  a 
year,  he  had  married  his  cousin,  Virginia  Clemm,  a  very  amiable  and 
lovely  girl,  who  was  as  poor  as  himself,  and  little  fitted,  except  by  her 


282  APPENDIX 

gentle  temper,  to  be  the  wife  of  such  a  person.  He  went  from  Rich 
mond  to  Baltimore,  and  after  a  short  time,  to  Philadelphia,  and  to 
New  York.  A  slight  acquaintance  with  Dr.  Hawks  had  led  that  acute 
and  powerful  writer  to  invite  his  contributions  to  the  "New  York 
Review,"  and  he  had  furnished  for  the  second  number  of  it  (for 
October,  1837)  an  elaborate  but  not  very  remarkable  article  upon 
Stephen's  then  recently  published  "Incidents  of  Travel  in  Egypt, 
Arabia  Petrea,  and  the  Holy  Land."  His  abilities  were  not  of  the  kind 
demanded  for  such  a  work,  and  he  never  wrote  another  paper  for  this 
or  for  any  other  Review  of  the  same  class.  He  had  commenced  in  the 
"Literary  Messenger,"  a  story  of  the  sea,  under  the  title  of  "Arthur 
Gordon  Pym,"*  and  upon  the  recommendation  of  Mr.  Paulding  and 
others,  it  was  printed  by  the  Harpers.  It  is  his  longest  work,  and  is 
not  without  some  sort  of  merit,  but  it  received  little  attention.  The 
publishers  sent  one  hundred  copies  to  England,  and  being  mistaken 
at  first  for  a  narrative  of  real  experiences,  it  was  advertised  to  be  re 
printed,  but  a  discovery  of  its  character,  I  believe,  prevented  such  a 
result.  An  attempt  is  made  in  it,  by  simplicity  of  style,  minuteness 
of  nautical  descriptions,  and  circumstantiality  of  narration,  to  give 
it  that  air  of  truth  which  constitutes  the  principal  attraction  of  Sir 
Edward  Seaward's  Narrative,  and  Robinson  Crusoe;  but  it  has  none 
of  the  pleasing  interest  of  these  tales ;  it  is  as  full  of  wonders  as  Mun- 
chausen,  has  as  many  atrocities  as  the  Book  of  Pirates,  and  as  liberal 
an  array  of  paining  and  revolting  horrors  as  ever  was  invented  by  Anne 
Radcliffe  or  George  Walker.  Thus  far  a  tendency  to  extravagance 
had  been  the  most  striking  infirmity  of  his  genius.  He  had  been  more 
anxious  to  be  intense  than  to  be  natural;  and  some  of  his  bizarreries 
had  been  mistaken  for  satire,  and  admired  for  that  quality.  After 
ward  he  was  more  judicious,  and  if  his  outlines  were  incredible  it  was 
commonly  forgotten  in  the  simplicity  of  his  details  and  their  co 
hesive  cumulation. 
Near  the  end  of  the  year  1838  he  settled  in  Philadelphia.  He  had 

THE  NARRATIVE  OF  ARTHUR  GORDON  PYM,  OF  NANTUCKET;  comprising  the 
Details  of  a  Mutiny  and  Atrocious  Butchery  on  board  the  American  Brig  Gram 
pus,  on  her  way  to  the  South  Seas — with  an  Account  of  the  Re-capture  of  the 
Vessel  by  the  Survivers ;  their  Shipwreck,  and  subsequent  Horrible  Sufferings  from 
Famine;  their  Deliverance  by  means  of  the  British  schooner  Jane  Gray;  the  brief 
Cruise  of  this  latter  Vessel  in  the  Antarctic  Ocean;  her  Capture,  and  the  Massacre 
of  her  Crew  among  a  Group  of  Islands  in  the  84th  parallel  of  southern  latitude; 
together  with  the  incredible  Adventures  and  Discoveries  still  further  South,  to 
which  that  distressing  Calamity  gave  rise. — 1  vol.  12mo.  pp.  198.  New- York, 
Harper  &  Brothers,  1838. 


APPENDIX  283 

no  very  definite  purposes,  but  trusted  for  support  to  the  chances  of 
success  as  a  magazinist  and  newspaper  correspondent.  "Mr.  Burton, 
the  comedian,  had  recently  established  the  "Gentleman's  Magazine," 
and  of  this  he  became  a  contributor,  and  in  May,  1839,  the  chief 
editor,  devoting  to  it,  for  ten  dollars  a  week,  two  hours  every  day, 
which  left  him  abundant  time  for  more  important  labors.  In  the  same 
month  he  agreed  to  furnish  such  reviewals  as  he  had  written  for  the 
"Literary  Messenger,"  for  the  "Literary  Examiner,"  a  new  magazine 
at  Pittsburgh.  But  his  more  congenial  pursuit  was  tale  writing,  and 
he  produced  about  this  period  some  of  his  most  remarkable  and  char 
acteristic  works  in  a  department  of  imaginative  composition  in  which 
he  was  henceforth 'alone  and  unapproachable.  The  "Fall  of  the  House 
of  Usher,"  and  "Legeia,"  are  the  most  interesting  illustrations  of  his 
mental  organization — his  masterpieces  in  a  peculiar  vein  of  romantic 
creation.  They  have  the  unquestionable  stamp  of  genius.  The  analy 
ses  of  the  growth  of  madness  in  one,  and  the  thrilling  revelations  of 
the  existence  of  a  first  wife  in  the  person  of  a  second,  in  the  other,  are 
made  with  consummate  skill ;  and  the  strange  and  solemn  and  fascin 
ating  beauty  which  informs  the  style  and  invests  the  circumstances 
of  both,  drugs  the  mind,  and  makes  us  forget  the  improbabilities  of 
their  general  design. 

An  awakened  ambition  and  the  healthful  influence  of  a  conviction 
that  his  works  were  appreciated,  and  that  his  fame  was  increasing, 
led  him  for  a  while  to  cheerful  views  of  life,  and  to  regular  habits  of 
conduct.  He  wrote  to  a  friend,  the  author  of  "Edge  Hill,"  in  Rich 
mond,  that  he  had  quite  overcome  "the  seductive  and  dangerous 
besetment"  by  which  he  had  so  often  been  prostrated,  and  to  another 
friend  that,  incredible  as  it  might  seem,  he  had  become  a  "model  of 
temperance,"  and  of  "other  virtues,"  which  it  had  sometimes  been 
difficult  for  him  to  practise.  Before  the  close  of  the  summer,  how 
ever,  he  relapsed  into  his  former  courses,  and  for  weeks  was  regardless 
of  everything  but  a  morbid  and  insatiable  appetite  for  the  means  of 
intoxication. 

In  the  autumn  he  published  all  the  prose  stories  he  had  then  written, 
in  two  volumes,  under  the  title  of  "Tales  of  the  Grotesque  and  the 
Arabesque."  The  work  was  not  saleable,  perhaps  because  its  con 
tents  were  too  familiar  from  recent  separate  publication  in  maga 
zines  ;  and  it  was  not  so  warmly  praised,  generally,  as  I  think  it  should 
have  been,  though  in  point  of  style  the  pieces  which  it  embraced  are 
much  less  perfect  than  they  were  made  subsequently. 

He  was  with  Mr.  Burton  until  June,  1840 — more  than  a  year.    Mr. 


284  APPENDIX 

Burton  appreciated1  his  abilities  and  would  gladly  have  continued  the 
connexion;  but  Poe  was  so  unsteady  of  purpose  and  so  unreliable  that 
the  actor  was  never  sure  when  he  left  the  city  that  his  business  would 
be  cared  for.  On  one  occasion,  returning  after  the  regular  day  of  pub 
lication,  he  found  the  number  unfinished,  and  Poe  incapable  of  duty. 
He  prepared  the  necessary  copy  himself,  published  the  magazine, 
and  was  proceeding  with  arrangements  for  another  month,  when  he 
received  a  letter  from  his  assistant,  of  which  the  tone  may  be  inferred 
from  this  answer: 

"I  am  sorry  you  have  thought  it  necessary  to  send  me  such  a  letter.  Your 
troubles  have  given  a  morbid  tone  to  your  feelings  which  it  is  your  duty  to  dis 
courage.  I  myself  have  been  as  severely  handled  by  the  world  as  you  can  possibly 
have  been,  but  my  sufferings  have  not  tinged  my  mind  with  melancholy,  nor 
jaundiced  my  views  of  society.  You  must  rouse  your  energies,  and  if  care  assail 
you,  conquer  it.  I  will  gladly  overlook  the  past.  I  hope  you  will  as  easily  fulfil 
your  pledges  for  the  future.  We  shall  agree  very  well,  though  I  cannot  permit 
the  magazine,  to  be  made  a  vehicle  for  that  sort  of  severity  which  you  think  is  so 
'  'successful  with  the  mob. ' '  I  am  truly  much  less  anxious  about  making  a  monthly 
"sensation"  than  I  am  upon  the  point  of  fairness.  You  must,  my  dear  sir,  get  rid 
of  your  avowed  ill-feelings  toward  your  brother  authors.  You  see  I  speak  plainly : 
I  cannot  do  otherwise  upon  such  a  subject.  You  say  the  people  love  havoc.  I 
think  they  love  justice.  I  think  you  yourself  would  not  have  written  the  article 
on  Dawes,  in  a  more  healthy  state  of  mind.  I  am  not  trammelled  by  any  vulgar 
consideration  of  expediency ;  I  would  rather  lose  money  than  by  such  undue  sever 
ity  wound  the  feelings  of  a  kind-hearted  and  honorable  man.  And  I  am  satisfied 
that  .Dawes  has  something  of  the  true  fire  in  him.  I  regretted  your  word-catching 
spirit.  But  I  wander  from  my  design.  I  accept  your  proposition  to  recommence 
your  interrupted  avocations  upon  the  Maga.  Let  us  meet  as  if  we  had  not  ex 
changed  letters.  Use  more  exercise,  write  when  feelings  prompt,  and  be  assured 
of  my  friendship.  You  will  soon  regain  a  healthy  activity  of  mind,  and  laugh  at 
your  past  vagaries." 

This  letter  was  kind  and  judicious.  It  gives  us  a  glimpse  of  Poe's 
theory  of  criticism,  and  displays  the  temper  and  principles  of  the 
literary  comedian  in,  an  honorable  light.  Two  or  three  months  after 
ward  Burton  went  out  of  town  to  fulfil  a  professional  engagement, 
leaving  material  and  directions  for  completing  the  next  number  of 
the  magazine  in  four  days.  He  was  absent  nearly  a  fortnight,  and  on 
returning  he  found  that  his  printers  in  the  meanwhile  had  not  re 
ceived  a  line  of  copy ;  but  that  Poe  had  prepared  the  prospectus  of  a 
new  monthly,  and  obtained  transcripts  of  his  subscription  and  ac 
count  books,  to  be  used  in  a  scheme  for  supplanting  him.  He  encount 
ered  his  associate  late  in  the  evening  at  one  of  his  accustomed  haunts, 
and  said,  "Mr.  Poe,  I  am  astonished:  Give  me  my  manuscripts  so 


APPENDIX  285 

that  I  can  attend  to  the  duties  you  have  so  shamefully  neglected,  and 
when  you  are  sober  we  will  settle."  Poe  interrupted  him  with  "Who 
are  you  that  presume  to  address  me  in  this  manner?  Burton,  I  am — 
the  editor — of  the  Penn  Magazine — and  you  are — hiccup — a  fool."  Of 
course  this  ended  his  relations  with  the  "Gentleman's." 

In  November,  1840,  Burton's  miscellany  was  merged  in  "The 
Casket,"  owned  by  Mr.  George  R.  Graham,  and  the  new  series  re 
ceived  the  name  of  its  proprietor,  who  engaged  Poe  in  its  editorship. 
His  connexion  with  "Graham's  Magazine"  lasted  about  a  year  and  a 
half,  and  this  was  one  of  the  most  active  and  brilliant  periods  in  his 
literary  life.  He  wrote  in  it  several  of  his  finest  tales  and  most 
trenchant  criticisms,  and  challenged  attention  by  his  papers  entitled 
"Autography,"  and  those  on  cryptology  and  cyphers.  In  the  first, 
adopting  a  suggestion  of  Lavater,  he  attempted  the  illustration  of 
character  from  handwriting;  and  in  the  second,  he  assumed  that 
human  ingenuity  could  construct  no  secret  writing  which  human  in 
genuity  could  not  resolve:  a  not  very  dangerous  proposition,  since  it 
implied  no  capacity  in  himself  to  discover  every  riddle  of  this  kind 
that  should  be  invented.  He,  however,  succeeded  with  several  difficult 
cryptographs  that  were  sent  to  him,  and  the  direction  of  his  mind  to 
the  subject  led  to  the  composition  of  some  of  the  tales  of  ratiocination 
which  so  largely  increased  his  reputation.  The  infirmities  which  in 
duced  his  separation  from  Mr.  White  and  from  Mr.  Burton  at  length 
compelled  Mr.  Graham  to  seek  for  another  editor;  but  Poe  still  re 
mained  in  Philadelphia,  engaged  from  time  to  time  in  various  literary 
occupations,  and  in  the  vain  effort  to  establish  a  journal  of  his  own  to 
be  called  "The  Stylus."  Although  it  requires  considerable  capital 
to  carry  on  a  monthly  of  the  description  he  proposed,  I  think  it  would 
not  have  been  difficult,  with  his  well-earned  fame  as  a  magazinist, 
for  him  to  have  found  a  competent  and  suitable  publisher,  but  for  the 
unfortunate  notoriety  of  his  habits,  and  the  failure  in  succession  of 
three  persons  who  had  admired  him  for  his  genius  and  pitied  him  for 
his  misfortunes,  by  every  means  that  tact  or  friendship  could  suggest, 
to  induce  the  consistency  and  steadiness  of  application  indispensable 
to  success  in  such  pursuits.  It  was  in  the  spring  of  1848 — more  than 
a  year  after  his  dissociation  from  Graham — that  he  wrote  the  story 
of  "The  Gold  Bug,"  for  which  he  was  paid  a  prize  of  one  hundred 
dollars.  It  has  relation  to  Captain  Kyd's  treasure,  and  is  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  illustrations  of  his  ingenuity  of  construction  and 
apparent  subtlety  of  reasoning.  The  interest  depends  upon  the  solution 
of  an  intricate  cypher.  In  the  autumn  of  1844  Poe  removed  to  New  York. 


286  APPENDIX 

It  was  while  he  resided  in  Philadelphia  that  I  became  acquainted 
with  him.  His  manner,  except  during  his  fits  of  intoxication,  was 
very  quiet  and  gentlemanly;  he  was  usually  dressed  with  simplicity 
and  elegance;  and  when  once  he  sent  for  me  to  visit  him,  during  a 
period  of  illness  caused  by  protracted  and  anxious  watching  at  the 
side  of  his  sick  wife,  I  was  impressed  by  the  singular  neatness  and  the 
air  of  refinement  in  his  home.  It  was  in  a  small  house,  in  one  of  the 
pleasant  and  silent  neighborhoods  far  from  the  centre  of  the  town, 
and  though  slightly  and  cheaply  furnished,  everything  in  it  was  so 
tasteful  and  so  fitly  disposed  that  it  seemed  altogether  suitable  for  a 
man  of  genius.  For  this  and  for  most  of  the  comforts  he  enjoyed  in  his 
brightest  as  in  his  darkest  years,  he  was  chiefly  indebted  to  his 
mother-in-law,  who  loved  him  with  more  than  maternal  devotion 
and  constancy. 

He  had  now  written  his  most  acute  criticisms  and  his  most  ad 
mirable  tales.  Of  tales,  besides  those  to  which  I  have  referred,  he  had 
produced  "The  Descent  into  the  Maelstrom,"  "The  Premature 
Burial,"  "The  Purloined  Letter,"  "The  Murders  of  the  Rue  Morgue," 
and  its  sequel,  "The  Mystery  of  Marie  Roget."  The  scenes  of  the 
last  three  are  in  Paris,  where  the  author's  friend,  the  Chevalier 
Auguste  Dupin,  is  supposed  to  reveal  to  him  the  curiosities  of  his 
experience  and  observation  in  matters  of  police.  "The  Mystery  of 
Marie  Roget"  was  first  published  in  the  autumn  of  1842,  before  an 
extraordinary  excitement,  occasioned  by  the  murder  of  a  young  girl 
named  Mary  Rogers,  in  the  vicinity  of  New  York,  had  quite  sub 
sided,  though  several  months  after  the  tragedy.  Under  pretence  of 
relating  the  fate  of  a  Parisian  grisette,  Mr.  Poe  followed  in  minute 
detail  the  essential  while  merely  paralleling  the  inessential  facts  of  the 
real  murder.  His  object  appears  to  have  been  to  reinvestigate  the 
case  and  to  settle  his  own  conclusions  as  to  the  probable  culprit. 
There  is  a  great  deal  of  hair-splitting  in  the  incidental  discussions  by 
Dupin,  throughout  all  these  stories,  but  it  is  made  effective.  Much 
of  their  popularity,  as  well  as  that  of  other  tales  of  ratiocination  by 
Poe,  arose  from  their  being  in  a  new  key.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that 
they  are  not  ingenious;  but  they  have  been  thought  more  ingenious 
than  they  are,  on  account  of  their  method  and  air  of  method.  In 
"The  Murders  of  the  Rue  Morgue,"  for  instance,  what  ingenuity  is 
displayed  in  unravelling  a  web  which  has  been  woven  for  the  express 
purpose  of  unravelling  ?  The  reader  is  made  to  confound  the  ingenuity 
of  the  suppositious  Dupin  with  that  of  the  writer  of  the  story.  These 
works  brought  the  name  of  Poe  himself  somewhat  conspicuously  be- 


APPENDIX  287 

fore  the  law  courts  of  Paris.  The  journal,  La  Commerce,  gave  a 
feuilleton  in  which  "The  Murders  of  the  Rue  Morgue"  appeared  in 
translation.  Afterward  a  writer  for  La  Quotidienne  served  it  for  that 
paper  under  the  title  of  "LOrang-Otang"  A  third  party  accused  La 
Quotidienne  of  plagiary  from  La  Commerce,  and  in  the  course  of  the 
legal  investigation  which  ensued,  the  feuilletoniste  of  La  Commerce 
proved  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  tribunal  that  he  had  stolen  the  tale 
entirely  from  Mr.  Poe,*  whose  merits  were  soon  after  canvassed  in 

*The  controversy  is  wittily  described  in  the  following  extract  from  a  Parisian 
journal,  L'Entr  Acte,  of  the  twentieth  of  October,  1846: 

*'Un  grand  journal  accusait  1'autre  jour  M.  Old-Nick  d'avoir  vole  un  orang 
outang.  Get  interessant  animal  flanait  dans  le  feuilleton  de  la  Quotidienne,  lorsque 
M.  Old-Nick  le  vit,  le  trouva  a  son  gout  et  s'en  empara.  Notre  confrere  avait  sans 
doute  besoin  d'un  groom.  On  sait  que  les  Anglais  ont  depuis  long-temps  colonise 
les  orangs-outangs,  et  les  ont  instruits  dans  1'art  de  porter  les  lettres  sur  un  plateau 
de  vermeil,  et  de  vernir  les  bottes.  II  paraitrait,  toujours  suivant  le  meme  grand 
journal,  que  M.  Old-Nick,  apres  avoir  derobe  cet  orang-outang  a  la  Quotidienne, 
1'aurait  ensuite  cede  au  Commerce,  comme  propriete  a  lui  appartenant.  Je  sais 
que  M.  Old-Nick  est  un  gar£on  plein  d'esprit  et  plein  d'honneur,  assez  riche  de 
son  propre  fonds  pour  ne  pas  s'approprier  les  orangs-outangs  des  autres;  cette 
accusation  me  surprit.  Apres  tout,  me  dis-je,  il  y  a  eu  des  monomanies  plus  ex- 
traordinaries  que  celle-la;  le  grand  Bacon  ne  pouvait  voir  un  baton  de  cire  a 
cacheter  sans  se  1'approprier:  dans  une  conference  avec  M.  de  Metternich  aux 
Tuileries,  1'Empereur  s'apercut  que  le  diplomate  autnchien  glissait  des  pains  a 
cacheter  dans  sa  poche.  M.  Old-Nick  a  une  autre  manie,  il  fait  les  orangs-outangs. 
Je  m'attendais  toujours  a  ce  que  la  Quotidienne  jetat  feu  et  flammes  et  demandat 
a  grands  cris  son  homme  des  bois.  II  f  aut  vous  dire  que  j  'avais  lu  son  histoire  dans 
le  Commerce,  elle  etait  charmante  d'esprit  et  de  style,  pleine  de  rapidite  et  de 
desinvolture;  la  Quotidienne  1'avait  6galement  publiee,  mais  en  trois  feuilletons. 
L'orang-outang  du  Commerce  n'avait  que  neuf  colonnes.  II  s'agissait  done  d'un 
autre  quadrumane  litteraire.  Ma  foi  non!  c'etait  le  meme;  seulement  il  n'ap- 
partenait  ni  a  la  Quotidienne,  ni  au  Commerce.  M.  Old-Nick  1 'avait  emprunte  a 
un  romancier  Americain  qu'il  est  en  train  d'inventer  dans  la  Revue  des  Deux- 
Mondes.  Ce  romancier  s'appelle  Poe ;  je  ne  dis  pas  le  contraire.  Voila  done  un 
£crivain  qui  use  du  droit  legitime  d'arranger  les  nouvelles  d'un  romancier  Ameri 
cain  qu'il  a  invente,  et  on  1'accuse  de  plagiat,  de  vol  au  feuilleton;  on  alarme  ses 
amis  en  leur  faisant  croire  que  cet  ecrivain  est  possede  de  la  monomanie  des 
orangs-outangs.  Par  la  Courchamps!  voila  qui  me  parait  leger.  M.  Old-Nick  a 
ecrit  au  journal  en  question  une  reponse  pour  retablir  sa  moralite,  attaquee  a 
Tendroit  des  orangs-outangs.  Cet  orang-outang  a  mis,  ces  jours  derniers,  toute 
la  litterature  en  6moi;  personne  n'a  cru  un  seul  instant  a  1 'accusation  qu'on  a 
essaye  de  faire  peser  sur  M.  Old-Nick,  d'autant  plus  qu'il  avait  pris  soin  d'indiquer 
luimeme  la  cage  ou  il  avait  pris  son  orang-outang.  Ceci  va  fournir  de  nouvelles 
armes  a  la  secte  qui  croit  aux  romanciers  Americains.  Le  prejuge  de  1'existence 
de  Cooper  en  prendra  de  nouvelles  forces.  En  attendant  que  la  verite  se  decouvre, 
nous  sommes  forces  de  convenir  que  ce  Poe  est  un  gaillard  bien  fin,  bien  spirituel, 
quand  il  est  arrange  par  M.  Old-Nick. 


288  APPENDIX 

the  "Revue  des  Deux,  Mondes,"  and  whose  best  tales  were  upon  this 
impulse  translated  by  Mme.  Isabelle  Meunier  for  the  Democratie 
Pacifique  and  other  French  gazettes. 

In  New  York  Poe  entered  upon  a  new  sort  of  life.  Heretofore,  from 
the  commencement  of  his  literary  career,  he  had  resided  in  provincial 
towns.  Now  he  was  in  a  metropolis,  and  with  a  reputation  which 
might  have  served  as  a  passport  to  any  society  he  could  desire.  For 
the  first  time  he  was  received  into  circles  capable  of  both  the  apprecia 
tion  and  the  production  of  literature.  He  added  to  his  fame  soon 
after  he  came  to  the  city  by  the  publication  of  that  remarkable 
composition  'The  Raven,"  of  which  Mr.  Willis  has  observed  that  in 
his  opinion  "it  is  the  most  effective  single  example  of  fugitive  poetry 
ever  published  in  this  country,  and  is  unsurpassed  in  English  poetry 
for  subtle  conception,  masterly  ingenuity  of  versification,  and  con 
sistent  sustaining  of  imaginative  lift' ' ;  and  by  that  of  one  of  the  most 
extraordinary  instances  of  the  naturalness  of  detail — the  verisimilitude 
of  minute  narrative — for  which  he  was  preeminently  distinguished, 
his  "Mesmeric  Revelation,"  purporting  to  be  the  last  conversation 
of  a  .somnambule,  held  just  before  death  with  his  magnetizer;  which 
was  followed  by  the  yet  more  striking  exhibition  of  abilities  in  the 
same  way,  entitled  "The  Facts  in  the  Case  of  M.  Valdemar,"  in  which 
the  subject  is  represented  as  having  been  mesmerized  in  articulo 
mortis.  These  pieces  were  reprinted  throughout  the  literary  and 
philosophical  world,  in  nearly  all  languages,  everywhere  causing  sharp 
and  curious  speculation,  and  where  readers  could  be  persuaded  that 
they  were  fables,  challenging  a  reluctant  but  genuine  admiration. 

He  had  not  been  long  in  New- York  before  he  was  engaged  by  Mr. 
Willis  and  General  Morris  as  critic  and  assistant  editor  of  "The 
Mirror."  He  remained  in  this  situation  about  six  months,  when  he 
became  associated  with  Mr.  Briggs  in  the  conduct  of  the  "Broadway 
Journal,"  which  in  October,  1845,  passed  entirely  into  his  possession. 
He  had  now  the  long-sought  but  never  before  enjoyed  absolute  con 
trol  of  a  literary  gazette,  and,  with  much  friendly  assistance,  he  main 
tained  it  long  enough  to  show  that  whatever  his  genius,  he  had  not  the 
kind  or  degree  of  talent  necessary  to  such  a  position.  His  chief  critical 
writings  in  the  "Broadway  Journal,"  were  a  paper  on  Miss  Barrett's 
Poems  and  a  long  discussion  of  the  subject  of  plagiarism,  with  especial 
reference  to  Mr.  Longfellow.  In  March,  1845,  he  had  given  a  lecture 
at  the  Society  Library  upon  the  American  poets,  composed,  for  the 
most  part,  of  fragments  of  his  previously  published  reviewals;  and  in 
the  autumn  he  accepted  an  invitation  to  read  a  poem  before  the 


APPENDIX  289 

Boston  Lyceum.  A  week  after  the  event,  he  printed  in  the '  'Broadway 
Journal"  the  following  account  of  it,  in  reply  to  a  paragraph  in  one 
of  the  city  papers,  founded  upon  a  statement  in  the  Boston  "Tran 
script." 

"Our  excellent  friend,  Major  Noah,  has  suffered  himself  to  be  cajoled  by  that 
most  beguiling  of  all  beguiling  little  divinities,  Miss  Walter,  of  'The  Transcript.' 
We  have  been  looking  all  over  her  article  with  the  aid  of  a  taper,  to  see  if  we  could 
discover  a  single  syllable  of  truth  in  it — and  really  blush  to  acknowledge  that  we 
cannot.  The  adorable  creature  has  been  telling  a  parcel  of  fibs  about  us,  by  way 
of  revenge  for  something  that  we  did  to  Mr.  Longfellow  (who  admires  her  very 
much)  and  for  calling  her  'a  pretty  little  witch'  into  the  bargain.  The  facts  of  the 
case  seem  to  be  these :  We  were  invited  to  'deliver'  (stand  and  deliver)  a  poem 
before  the  Boston  Lyceum.  As  a  matter  of  course,  we  accepted  the  invitation. 
The  audience  was  'large  and  distinguished.'  Mr.  Gushing*  preceded  us  with  a 
very  capital  discourse :  he  was  much  applauded.  On  arising,  we  were  most  cordially 
received.  We  occupied  some  fifteen  minutes  with  an  apology  for  not'  delivering,' 
as  is  usual  in  such  cases,  a  didactic  poem :  a  didactic  poem,  in  our  opinion,  being 
precisely  no  poem  at  all.  After  some  farther  words — still  of  apology — for  the 
'indefinitiveness'  and  'general  imbecility'  of  what  we  had  to  offer — all  so  unworthy 
a  Bostonian  audience — we  commenced,  and,  with  many  interruptions  of  applause, 
concluded.  Upon  the  whole  the  approbation  was  considerably  more  (the  more 
the  pity  too)  than  that  bestowed  upon  Mr.  Gushing.  When  we  had  made  an  end, 
the  audience,  of  course,  arose  to  depart;  and  about  one-tenth  of  them,  probably, 
had  really  departed,  when  Mr.  Coffin,  one  of  the  managing  committee,  arrested 
those  who  remained,  by  the  announcement  that  we  had  been  requested  to  deliver 
The  Raven.'  We  delivered  'The  Raven'  forthwith — (without  taking  a  receipt) — 
were  very  cordially  applauded  again — and  this  was  the  end  of  it — with  the  excep 
tion  of  the  sad  tale  invented  to  suit  her  own  purposes,  by  that  amiable  little 
enemy  of  ours,  Miss  Walter.  We  shall  never  call  a  woman  'a  pretty  little  witch' 
again,  as  long  as  we  live. 

"We  like  Boston.  We  were  born  there — and  perhaps  it  is  just  as  well  not  to 
mention  that  we  are  heartily,  ashamed  of  the  fact.  The  Bostonians  are  very  well 
in  their  way.  Their  hotels  are  bad.  Their  pumpkin  pies  are  delicious.  Their 
poetry  is  not  so  good.  Their  common  is  no  common  thing — and  the  duck-pond 
might  answer — if  its  answer  could  be  heard  for  the  frogs.  But  with  all  these  good 
qualities  the  Bostonians  have  no  soul.  They  have  always  evinced  towards  us, 
individually,  the  basest  ingratitude  for  the  services  we  rendered  them  in  enlighten 
ing  them  about  the  originality  of  Mr.  Longfellow.  When  we  accepted,  therefore, 
an  invitation  to  'deliver'  a  poem  in  Boston — we  accepted  it  simply  and  solely, 
because  we  had  a  curiosity  to  know  how  it  felt  to  be  publicly  hissed — and  because 
we  wished  to  see  what  effect  we  could  produce  by  a  neat  little  impromptu  speech 
in  reply.  Perhaps,  however,  we  overrated  our  own  importance,  or  the  Bostonian 
want  of  common  civility — which  is  not  quite  so  manifest  as  one  or  two  of  their 
editors  would  wish  the  public  to  believe.  We  assure  Major  Noah  that  he  is  wrong. 
The  Bostonians  are  well-bred — as  very  dull  persons  very  generally  are.  Still,  with 
their  vile  ingratitude  staring  us  in  the  eyes,  it  could  scarcely  be  supposed  that  we 

*Hon.  Caleb  Gushing,  then  recently  returned  from  his  mission  to  China. 


290  APPENDIX 

would  put  ourselves  to  the  trouble  of  composing  for  the  Bostonians  anything 
in  the  shape  of  an  original  poem.  We  did  not.  We  had  a  poem  (of  about  500 
lines)  lying  by  us — one  quite  as  good  as  new — one,  at  all  events,  that  we  considered 
would  answer  sufficiently  well  for  an  audience  of  Transcendentalists.  That  we 
gave  them — it  was  the  best  that  we  had — for  the  price — and  it  did  answer  re 
markably  well.  Its  name  was  not  'The  Messenger-Star' — who  but  Miss  Walter 
would  ever  think  of  so  delicious  a  little  bit  of  invention  as  that  ?  We  had  no  name 
for  it  at  all.  The  poem  is  what  is  occasionally  called  a  'juvenile  poem' — but  the 
fact  is,  it  is  anything  but  juvenile  now,  for  we  wrote  it,  printed  it,  and  published 
it,  in  book  form,  before  we  had  fairly  completed  our  tenth  year,  We  read  it 
verbatim,  from  a  copy  now  in  our  possession,  and  which  we  shall  be  happy  to  show 
at  any  moment  to  any  of  our  inquisitive  friends.  We  do  not,  ourselves,  think  the 
poem  a  remarkably  good  one: — it  is  not  sufficiently  transcendental.  Still  it  did 
well  enough  for  the  Boston  audience — who  evinced  characteristic  discrimination 
in  understanding,  and  especially  applauding,  all  those  knotty  passages  which  we 
ourselves  have  not  yet  been  able  to  understand. 

"As  regards  the  anger  of  the  'Boston  Times'  and  one  or  two  other  absurdities — 
as  regards,  we  say,  the  wrath  of  Achilles — we  incurred  it — or  rather  its  manifesta 
tion — by  letting  some  of  our  cat  out  of  the  bag  a  few  hours  sooner  than  we  had 
intended.  Over  a  bottle  of  champagne,  that  night,  we  confessed  to  Messrs.  Gush 
ing,  Whipple,  Hudson,  Fields,  and  a  few  other  natives  who  swear  not  altogether 
by  the  frog-pond — we  confessed,  we  say,  the  soft  impeachment  of  the  hoax. 
Et  hinc  illae  irae.  We  should  have  waited  a  couple  of  days." 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  suggest  that  this  must  have  been  written 
before  he  had  quite  recovered  from  the  long  intoxication  which  mad 
dened  him  at  the  time  to  which  it  refers — that  he  was  not  born  in 
Boston,  that  the  poem  was  not  published  in  his  tenth  year,  and  that 
the  "hoax"  was  all  an  afterthought.  Two  weeks  later  he  renewed  the 
discussion  of  the  subject  in  the  "Broadway  Journal,"  commenting  as 
follows  upon  allusions  to  it  by  other  parties : 

"Were  the  question  demanded  of  us — 'What  is  the  most  exquisite  of  sublunary 
pleasures?'  we  should  reply,  without  hesitation,  the  making  a  fuss,  or,  in  the 
classical  words  of  a  western  friend,  the  'kicking  up  a  bobbery.'  Never  was  a 
'bobbery'  more  delightful  than  which  we  have  just  succeeded  in  'kicking  up'  all 
around  about  Boston  Common.  We  never  saw  the  Frogpondians  so  lively  in  our 
lives.  They  seem  absolutely  to  be  upon  the  point  of  waking  up.  In  about  nine 
days  the  puppies  may  get  open  their  eyes.  That  is  to  say  they  may  get  open  their 
eyes  to  certain  facts  which  have  long  been  obvious  to  all  the  world  except  them 
selves — the  facts  that  there  exist  other  cities  than  Boston — other  men  of  letters 
than  Professor  Longfellow — other  vehicles  of  literary  information  than  the  'Down- 
East  Review.* 

' 'We  had  tact  enough  not  to  be  'taken  in  and  done  for'  by  the  Bostonians.  Timeo 
Danaos  et  dona  ferentes — (for  timeo  substitute  contemno  or  turn-up-our-nose-o). 
We  knew  very  well  that  among  a  certain  clique  of  Frogpondians,  there  existed  a 
predetermination  to  abuse  us  under  any  circumstances.  We  knew  that,  write  what 
we  would,  they  would  swear  it  to  be  worthless.  We  knew  that  were  we  to  compose 


APPENDIX  291 

for  them  a  'Paradise  Lost,'  they  would  pronounce  it  an  indifferent  poem.  It 
would  have  been  very  weak  in  us,  then,  to  put  ourselves  to  the  trouble  of  attempt 
ing  to  please  these  people.  We  preferred  pleasing  ourselves.  We  read  before  them 
a  'juvenile' — a  very  'juvenile'  poem — and  thus  the  Frogpondians  were  had — were 
delivered  up  to  the  enemy  bound  hand  and  foot.  Never  were  a.  set  of  people  more 
completely  demolished.  They  have  blustered  and  flustered — but  what  have  they 
done  or  said  that  has  not  made  them  more  thoroughly  ridiculous? — what,  in  the 
name  of  Momus,  is  it  possible  for  them  to  do  or  to  say?  We  'delivered'  them  the 
'juvenile  poem*  and  they  received  it  with  applause.  This  is  accounted  for  by  the 
fact  that  the  clique  (contemptible  in  numbers  as  in  everything  else)  were  overruled 
by  the  rest  of  the  assembly.  These  malignants  did  not  dare  to  interrupt  by  their 
preconcerted  hisses,  the  respectful  and  profound  attention  of  the  majority.  We 
have  been  told,  indeed,  that  as  many  as  three  or  four  of  the  personal  friends  of  the 
little  old  lady  entitled  Miss  Walter,  did  actually  leave  the  hall  during  the  recita 
tion — but,  upon  the  whole,  this  was  the  very  best  thing  they  could  do.  We  have 
been  told  this,  we  say — we  did  not  see  them  take  their  departure: — the  fact  is  they 
belong  to  a  class  of  people  that  we  make  it  a  point  never  to  see.  The  poem  being 
thus  well  received,  in  spite  of  this  rediculous  little  cabal — the  next  thing  to  be  done 
was  to  abuse  it  in  the  papers.  Here,  they  imagined,  they  were  sure  of  their  game. 
But  what  have  they  accomplished?  The  poem,  they  say,  is  bad.  We  admit  it. 
We  insisted  upon  this  fact  in  our  prefatory  remarks,  and  we  insist  upon  it  now, 
over  and  over  again.  It  is  bad — it  is  wretched — and  what  then?  We  wrote  it  at 
ten  years  of  age — had  it  been  worth  even  a  pumpkin-pie  undoubtedly  we  should 
not  have  'delivered'  it  to  them.  To  demonstrate  its  utter  worthlessness,  'The 
Boston  Star'  has  copied  the  poem  in  full,  with  two  or  three  columns  of  criticism 
(we  suppose)  by  way  of  explaining  that  we  should  have  been  hanged  for  its  per 
petration.  There  is  no  doubt  of  it  whatever — we  should.  The  Star,'  however, 
(a  dull  luminary)  has  done  us  more  honor  than  it  intended;  it  has  copied  our  third 
edition  of  the  poem,  revised  and  improved.  We  considered  this  too  good  for  the 
occasion  by  one-half,  and  so  'delivered'  the  first  edition  with  all  its  imperfections 
on  its  head.  It  is  the  first — the  original  edition — the  delivered  edition — which  we 
now  republish  in  our  collection  of  Poems." 

When  he  accepted  the  invitation  of  the  Lyceum  he  intended  to  write 
an  original  poem,  upon  a  subject  which  he  said  had  haunted  his 
imagination  for  years;  but  cares,  anxieties,  and  feebleness  of  will, 
prevented ;  and  a  week  before  the  appointed  night  he  wrote  to  a  friend, 
imploring  assistance.  "You  compose  with  such  astonishing  facility," 
he  urged  in  his  letter,  "that  you  can  easily  furnish  me,  quite  soon 
enough,  a  poem  that  shall  foe  equal  to  my  reputation.  For  the  love 
of  God  I  beseech  you  to  help  me  in  this  extremity."  The  lady  wrote 
him  kindly,  advising  him  judiciously,  but  promising  to  attempt  the 
fulfilment  of  his  wishes.  She  was,  however,  an  invalid,  and  so  failed.* 

*This  lady  was  the  late  Mrs.  Osgood,  and  a  fragment  of  what  she  wrote  under 
these  circumstances  may  be  found  in  the  last  edition  of  her  works  under  the  title 
of  "Lulin,  or  the  Diamond  Fay." 


292  APPENDIX 

At  last,  instead  of  pleading  illness  himself,  as  he  had  previously  done 
on  a  similar  occasion,  he  determined  to  read  his  poem  of  44A1  Aaraaf," 
the  original  publication  of  which,  in  1829,  has  already  been  stated. 

The  last  number  of  the  "Broadway  Journal"  was  published  on  the 
third  of  January,  1846,  and  Poe  soon  after  commenced  the  series  of 
papers  entitled  'The  Literati  of  New- York  City,"  which  were  pub 
lished  in  "The  Lady's  Book"  in  six  numbers,  from  May  to  October. 
Their  spirit,  boldness,  and  occasional  causticity,  caused  them  to  be 
much  talked  about,  and  three  editions  were  necessary  to  supply  the 
demand  for  some  numbers  of  the  magazine  containing  them.  They 
however  led  to  a  disgraceful  quarrel,  and  this  to  their  premature  con 
clusion.  Dr.  Thomas  Dunn  English,  who  had  at  one  time  sustained 
the  most  intimate  relations  with  Poe,  chose  to  evince  his  resentment 
of  the  critic's  unfairness  by  the  publication  of  a  card  in  which  he 
painted  strongly  the  infirmities  of  Poe's  life  and  character,  and  alleged 
that  he  had  on  several  occasions  inflicted  upon  him  personal  chastise 
ment.  This  was  not  a  wise  confession,  for  a  gentleman  never  appeals 
to  his  physical  abilities  except  for  defence.  But  the  entire  publica 
tion,  even  if  every  word  of  it  were  true,  was  unworthy  of  Dr.  English, 
unnecessary,  and  not  called  for  by  Poe's  article,  though  that,  as  every 
one  acquainted  with  the  parties  might  have  seen,  was  entirely  false 
in  what  purported  to  be  facts.  The  statement  of  Dr.  English 
appeared  in  the  New- York  "Mirror"  of  the  twenty-third  of  June, 
and  on  the  twenty-seventh  Mr.  Poe  sent  to  Mr.  Godey  for  publication 
in  the  "Lady's  Book"  his  rejoinder,  which  would  have  made  about 
five  of  the  large  pages  of  that  miscellany.  Mr.  Godey  very  properly 
declined  to  print  it,  and  observed,  in  the  communication  of  his 
decision,  that  the  tone  of  the  article  was  regarded  as  unsuitable  for 
his  work  and  as  altogether  wrong.  In  compliance  with  the  author's 
wishes,  however,  he  had  caused  its  appearance  in  a  daily  paper.  Poe 
then  wrote  to  him : 

"The  man  or  men  who  told  you  that  there  was  anything  wrong  in  the  tone  of  my 
reply  were  either  my  enemies,  or  your  enemies,  or  asses.  When  you  see  them,  tell 
them  so,  from  me.  I  have  never  written  an  article  upon  which  I  more  confidently 
depend  for  literary  reputation  than  that  Reply.  Its  merit  lay  in  its  being  precisely 
adapted  to  its  purpose.  In  this  city  I  have  had  upon  it  the  favorable  judgments 
of  the  best  men.  All  the  error  about  it  was  yours.  You  should  have  done  as  I 
requested — published  it  in  the  'Book.'  It  is  of  no  use  to  conceive  a  plan  if  you 
have  to  depend  upon  another  for  its  execution." 

Nevertheless,  I  agree  with  Mr.  Godey.    Poe's  article  was  as  bad  as 


APPENDIX  293 

that  of  English.    Yet  a  part  of  one  of  its  paragraphs  is  interesting, 
and  it  is  here  transcribed: 

— "Let  me  not  permit  any  profundity  of  disgust  to  induce,  even  for  an  instant, 
a  violation  of  the  dignity  of  truth.  What  is  not  false,  amid  the  scurrility  of  this 
man's  statements,  it  is  not  in  my  nature  to  brand  as  false,  although  oozing  from 
the  filthy  lips  of  which  a  lie  is  the  only  natural  language.  The  errors  and  frailties 
v/hich  I  deplore,  it  cannot  at  least  be  asserted  that  I  have  been  the  coward  to  deny. 
Never,  even,  have  I  made  attempt  at  extenuating  a  weakness  which  is  (or,  by  the 
blessing  of  God,  was)  a  calamity,  although  those  who  did  not  know  me  intimately 
had  little  reason  to  regard  it  otherwise  than  as  a  crime.  For,  indeed,  had  my 
pride,  or  that  of  my  family  permitted,  there  was  much — very  much — there  was 
everything — to  be  offered  in  extenuation.  Perhaps,  even,  there  was  an  epoch  at 
which  it  might  not  have  been  wrong  in  me  to  hint — what  by  the  testimony  of  Dr. 
Francis  and  other  medical  men  I  might  have  demonstrated,  had  the  public,  in 
deed,  cared  for  the  demonstration — that  the  irregularities  so  profoundly  lamented 
were  the  effect  of  a  terrible  evil  rather  than  its  cause. — And  now  let  me  thank  God 
that  in  redemption  from  the  physical  ill  I  have  forever  got  rid  of  the  moral." 

Dr.  Francis  never  gave  any  such  testimony.  On  one  occasion  Poe 
borrowed  fifty  dollars  from  a  distinguished  literaty  woman  of  South 
Carolina,  promising  to  return  it  in  a  few  days,  and  when  he  failed  to 
do  so,  and  was  asked  for  a  written  acknowledgment  of  the  debt  that 
might  be  exhibited  to  the  husband  of  the  friend  who  had  thus  served 
him,  he  denied  all  knowledge  of  it,  and  threatened  to  exhibit  a  corre 
spondence  which  he  said  would  make  the  woman  infamous,  if  she 
said  any  more  on  the  subject.  Of  course  there  had  never  been  any 
such  correspondence,  but  when  Poe  heard  that  a  brother  of  the 
slandered  party  was  in  quest  of  him  for  the  purpose  of  taking  the 
satisfaction  supposed  to  be  due  in  such  cases,  he  sent  for  Dr.  Francis 
and  induced  him  to  carry  to  the  gentleman  his  retraction  and  apology, 
with  a  statement  which  seemed  true  enough  at  the  moment,  that  Poe 
was  "out  of  his  head."  It  is  an  ungracious  duty  to  describe  such  con 
duct  in  a  person  of  Poe's  unquestionable  genius  and  capacities  of 
greatness,  but  those  who  are  familiar  with  the  career  of  this  extra 
ordinary  creature  can  recall  but  too  many  similar  anecdotes;  and  as 
to  his  intemperance,  they  perfectly  well  understand  that  its  pathology 
was  like  that  of  ninety-nine  of  every  hundred  cases  of  the  disease. 

As  the  autumn  of  1 846  wore  on,  Poe's  habits  of  frequent  intoxication 
and  his  inattention  to  the  means  of  support  reduced  him  to  much 
more  than  common  destitution.  He  was  now  living  at  Fordham, 
several  miles  from  the  city,  so  that  his  necessities  were  not  generally 
known  even  among  his  acquaintances;  but  when  the  dangerous  illness 
of  his  wife  was  added  to  his  misfortunes,  and  his  dissipation  and 


294  APPENDIX 

accumulated  causes  of  anxiety  had  prostrated  all  his  own  energies, 
the  subject  was  introduced  into  the  journals.  The  "Express"  said: 

"We  regret  to  learn  that  Edgar  A.  Poe  and  his  wife  are  both  dangerously  ill 
with  the  consumption,  and  that  the  hand  of  misfortune  lies  heavy  upon  their 
temporal  affairs.  We  are  sorry  to  mention  the  fact  that  they  are  so  far  reduced 
as  to  be  barely  able  to  obtain  the  necessaries  of  life.  This  is  indeed  a  hard  lot, 
and  we  hope  that  the  friends  and  admirers  of  Mr.  Poe  will  come  promptly  to  his 
assistance  in  his  bitterest  hour  of  need." 

Mr.  Willis,  in  an  article  in  the  "Home  Journal"  suggesting  a  hos 
pital  for  disabled  laborers  with  the  brain,  said — 

"The  feeling  we  have  long  entertained  on  this  subject,  has  been  freshened  by  a 
recent  paragraph  in  the  'Express,'  announcing  that  Mr.  Edgar  A.  Poe  and  his  wife 
were  both  dangerously  ill,  and  suffering  for  want  of  the  common  necessaries  of 
life.  Here  is  one  of  the  finest  scholars,  one  of  the  most  original  men  of  genius,  and 
one  of  the  most  industrious  of  the  literary  profession  of  our  country,  whose 
temporary  suspension  of  labor,  from  bodily  illness,  drops  him  immediately  to  a 
level  with  the  common  objects  of  public  charity.  There  was  no  intermediate 
stopping-place — no  respectful  shelter  where,  with  the  delicacy  due  to  genius  and 
culture,  he  might  secure  aid,  unadvertised,  till,  with  returning  health,  he  could 
resume  his  labors  and  his  unmortified  sense  of  independence.  He  must  either 
apply  to  individual  friends — (a  resource  to  which  death  is  sometimes  almost 
preferable) — or  suffer  down  to  the  level  where  Charity  receives  claimants,  but 
where  Rags  and  Humiliation  are  the  only  recognised  Ushers  to  her  presence.  Is 
this  right?  Should  there  not  be,  in  all  highly  civilized  communities,  an  Institution 
designed  expressly  for  educated  and  refined  objects  of  charity — a  hospital,  a 
retreat,  a  home  of  seclusion  and  comfort,  the  sufficient  claims  to  which  would  be 
such  susceptibilities  as  are  violated  by  the  above  mentioned  appeal  in  a  daily 
newspaper." 

The  entire  article  from  which  this  paragraph  is  taken,  was  an  in 
genious  apology  for  Mr.  Poe's  infirmities;  but  it  was  conceived  and 
executed  in  a  generous  spirit,  and  it  had  a  quick  effect  in  various  con 
tributions,  which  relieved  the  poet  from  pecuniary  embarrassments. 
The  next  week  he  published  the  following  letter: 

"My  Dear  Willis: — The  paragraph  which  has  been  put  in  circulation  respecting 
my  wife's  illness,  my  own,  my  poverty,  etc.,  is  now  lying  before  me;  together  with 

the  beautiful  lines  by  Mrs.  Locke  and  those  by  Mrs. ,  to  which  the  paragraph 

has  given  rise,  as  well  as  your  kind  and  manly  comments  in  'The  Home  Journal.' 
The  motive  of  the  paragraph  I  leave  to  the  conscience  of  him  or  her  who  wrote  it 
or  suggested  it.  Since  the  thing  is  done,  however,  and  since  the  concerns  of  my 
family  are  thus  pitilessly  thrust  before  the  public,  I  perceive  no  mode  of  escape 
from  a  public  statement  of  what  is  true  and  what  erroneous  in  the  report  alluded 
to.  That  my  wife  is  ill,  then,  is  true;  and  you  may  imagine  with  what  feelings  I 
add  that  this  illness,  hopeless  from  the  first,  has  been  heightened  and  precipitated 
by  her  reception  at  two  different  periods,  of  anonymous  letters, — one  enclosing 


APPENDIX  295 

the  paragraph  now  in  question;  the  other,  those  published  calumnies  of  Messrs. 
,  for  which  I  yet  hope  to  find  redress  in  a  court  of  justice. 

"Of  the  facts,  that  I  myself  have  been  long  and  dangerously  ill,  and  that  my 
illness  has  been  a  well  understood  thing  among  my  brethren  of  the  press,  the  best 
evidence  is  afforded  by  the  innumerable  paragraphs  of  personal  and  of  literary 
abuse  with  which  I  have  been  latterly  assailed.  This  matter,  however,  will 
remedy  itself.  At  the  very  first  blush  of  my  new  prosperity,  the  gentlemen  who 
toadied  me  in  the  old,  will  recollect  themselves  and  toady  me  again.  You,  who 
know  me,  will  comprehend  that  I  speak  of  these  things  only  as  having  served,  in  a 
measure,  to  lighten  the  gloom  of  unhappiness,  by  a  gentle  and  not  unpleasant 
sentiment  of  mingled  pity,  merriment  and  contempt.  That,  as  the  inevitable 
consequence  of  so  long  an  illness,  I  have  been  in  want  of  money,  it  would  be  folly 
in  me  to  deny — but  that  I  have  ever  materially  suffered  from  privation,  beyond 
the  extent  of  my  capacity  for  suffering,  is  not  altogether  true.  That  I  am  'without 
friends'  is  a  gross  calumny,  which  I  am  sure  you  never  could  have  believed,  and 
which  a  thousand  noble-hearted  men  would  have  good  right  never  to  forgive  me 
for  permitting  to  pass  unnoticed  and  undenied.  Even  in  the  city  of  New- York 
I  could  have  no  difficulty  in  naming  a  hundred  persons,  to  each  of  whom — when 
the  hour  for  speaking  had  arrived — I  could  and  would  have  applied  for  aid  with 
unbounded  confidence,  and  with  absolutely  no  sense  of  humiliation.  I  do  not 
think,  my  dear  Willis,  that  there  is  any  need  of  my  saying  more.  I  am  getting 
better,  and  may  add — if  it  be  any  comfort  to  my  enemies — that  I  have  little  fear 
of  getting  worse.  The  truth  is,  I  have  a  great  deal  to  do;  and  I  have  made  up 
my  mind  not  to  die  till  it  is  done.  Sincerely  yours, 

"December  30th,  1846.  EDGAR  A.  POE." 

This  was  written  for  effect.  He  had  not  been  ill  a  great  while,  nor 
dangerously  at  all;  there  was  no  literary  or  personal  abuse  of  him  in 
the  journals;  and  his  friends  in  town  had  been  applied  to  for  money 
until  their  patience  was  nearly  exhausted.  His  wife,  however,  was 
very  sick,  and  in  a  few  weeks  she  died.  In  a  letter  to  a  lady  in  Massa 
chusetts,  who,  upon  the  appearance  of  the  newspaper  articles  above 
quoted,  had  sent  him  money  and  expressions  of  sympathy,  he  wrote, 
under  date  of  March  10,  1847: 

"In  answering  your  kind  letter  permit  me  in  the  very  first  place  to  absolve  my 
self  from  a  suspicion  which,  under  the  circumstances,  you  could  scarcely  have 
failed  to  entertain — a  suspicion  of  discourtesy  toward  yourself,  in  not  having  more 
promptly  replied  to  you  ...  I  could  not  help  fearing  that  should  you  see  my 
letter  to  Mr.  Willis — in  which  a  natural  pride,  which  I  feel  you  could  not  blame, 
impelled  me  to  shrink  from  public  charity,  even  at  the  cost  of  truth,  in  denying  those 
necessities  which  were  but  too  real — I  could  not  help  fearing  that,  should  you  see  this 
letter,  you  would  yourself  feel  pained  at  having  caused  me  pain — at  having  been 
the  means  of  giving  further  publicity  to  an  unfounded  report — at  all  events  to  the 
report  of  a  wretchedness  which  I  had  thought  it  prudent  (since  the  world  regards 
wretchedness  as  a  crime)  so  publicly  to  disavow.  In  a  word,  venturing  to  judge 
your  noble  nature  by  my  own,  I  felt  grieved  lest  my  published  denial  might  cause 
you  to  regret  what  you  had  done;  and  my  first  impulse  was  to  write  you,  and 


296  APPENDIX 

assure  you,  even  at  the  risk  of  doing  so  too  warmly,  of  the  sweet  emotion,  made  up 
of  respect  and  gratitude  alone,  with  which  my  heart  was  filled  to  overflowing. 
While  I  was  hesitating,  however,  in  regard  to  the  propriety  of  this  step,  I  was 
overwhelmed  by  a  sorrow  so  poignant  as  to  deprive  me  for  several  weeks  of  all 
power  of  thought  or  action.  Your  letter,  now  lying  before  me,  tells  me  that  I  had 
not  been  mistaken  in  your  nature,  and  that  I  should  not  have  hesitated  to  address 

you;  but  believe  me,  my  dear  Mrs.  L ,  that  I  am  already  ceasing  to  regard 

those  difficulties  or  misfortunes  which  have  led  me  to  even  this  partial  corre 
spondence  with  yourself." 

For  nearly  a  year  Mr.  Poe  was  not  often  before  the  public,  but  he 
was  as  industrious,  perhaps,  as  he  had  been  at  any  time,  and  early  in 
1848  advertisement  was  made  of  his  intention  to  deliver  several 
lectures,  with  a  view  to  obtain  an  amount  of  money  sufficient  to 
establish  his  so-long-contemplated  monthly  magazine.  His  first 
lecture — and  only  one  at  this  period — was  given  at  the  Society  Li 
brary,  in  New- York,  on  the  ninth  of  February,  and  was  upon  the 
cosmogony  of  the  Universe;  it  was  attended  by  an  eminently  intel 
lectual  auditory,  and  the  reading  of  it  occupied  about  two  hours  and 
a  half;  it  was  what  he  afterwards  published  under  the  title  of  "Eureka, 
a  Prose  Poem." 

To  the  composition  of  this  work  he  brought  his  subtlest  and  highest 
capacities,  in  their  most  perfect  development.  Denying  that  the 
arcana  of  the  universe  can  be  explored  by  induction,  but  informing 
his  imagination  with  the  various  results  of  science,  he  entered  with 
unhestitating  boldness,  though  with  no  guide  but  the  divinest  in 
stinct, — that  sense  of  beauty,  in  which  our  great  Edwards  recognises 
the  flowering  of  all  truth — into  the  sea  of  speculation,  and  there  built 
up  of  according  laws  and  their  phenomena,  as  under  the  influence  of 
a  scientific  inspiration,  his  theory  of  Nature.  I  will  not  attempt  the 
difficult  task  of  condensing  his  propositions;  to  be  apprehended  they 
must  be  studied  in  his  own  terse  and  simple  language ;  but  in  this  we 
have  a  summary  of  that  which  he  regards  as  fundamental:  "The  law 
which  we  call  Gravity,"  he  says,  "exists  on  account  of  matter  having 
been  radiated,  at  its  origin,  atomically,  into  a  limited  sphere  of  space, 
from  one,  individual,  unconditional,  irrelative,  and  absolute  Particle 
Proper,  by  the  sole  process  in  which  it  was  possible  to  satisfy,  at  the 
same  time,  the  two  conditions,  radiation  and  equable  distribution 
throughout  the  sphere — that  is  to  say,  by  a  force  varying  in  direct 
proportion  with  the  squares  of  the  distances  between  the  radiated 
atoms,  respectively,  and  the  particular  centre  of  radiation." 

Poe  was  thoroughly  persuaded  that  he  had  discovered  the  great 
secret;  that  the  propositions  of  "Eureka"  were  true;  and  he  was  wont 


APPENDIX  297 

to  talk  of  the  subject  with  a  sublime  and  electrical  enthusiasm  which 
they  cannot  have  forgotten  who  were  familiar  with  him  at  the  period 
of  its  publication.    He  felt  that  an  author  known  solely  by  his  adven 
tures  in  the  lighter  literature,  throwing  down  the  gauntlet  to  professors 
of  science,  could  not  expect  absolute  fairness,  and  he  had  no  hope  but 
in  discussions  led  by  wisdom  and  candor.     Meeting  me,  he  said, 
"Have  you  read  'Eureka?'"    I  answered  "Not  yet :  I  have  just  glanced 
at  the  notice  of  it  by  Willis,  who  thinks  it  contains  no  more  fact  than 
fantasy,  and  I  am  sorry  to  see — sorry  if  it  be  true — suggests  that  it 
corresponds  in  tone  with  that  gathering  of  sham  and  obsolete  hy 
potheses  addressed  to  fanciful  tyros,  the  'Vestiges  of  Creation;'  and 
our  good  and  really  wise  friend  Bush,  whom  you  will  admit  to  be  of 
all  the  professors,  in  temper  one  of  the  most  habitually  just,  thinks 
that  while  you  may  have  guessed  very  shrewdly,  it  would  not  be 
difficult  to  suggest  many  difficulties  in  the  way  of  your  doctrine." 
"It  is  by  no  means  ingenuous,"  he  replied,  "to  hint  that  there  are 
such  difficulties,  and  yet  to  leave  them  unsuggested.    I  challenge  the 
investigation  of  every  point  in  the  book.    I  deny  that  there  are  any 
difficulties  which  I  have  not  met  and  overthrown.    Injustice  is  done 
me  by  the  application  of  this  word  /guess :'  I  have  assumed  nothing 
and  proved  a//."    In  his  preface  he  wrote:    "To  the  few  who  love  me 
and  whom  I  love;  to  those  who  feel  rather  than  to  those  who  think; 
to  the  dreamers  and  those  who  put  faith  in  dreams  as  in  the  only 
realities — I  offer  this  book  of  truths,  not  in  the  character  of  Truth- 
Teller,  but  for  the  beauty  that  abounds  in  its  truth:  constituting  it 
true.    To  these  I  present  the  composition  as  an  Art-Product  alone : — 
let  us  say  as  a  Romance ;  or,  if  it  be  not  urging  too  lofty  a  claim,  as  a 
Poem.    What  I  here  propound  is  true:  therefore  it  cannot  die:  or  if 
by  any  means  it  be  now  trodden  down  so  that  it  die,  it  will  rise  again 
to  the  life  everlasting." 

When  I  read  "Eureka"  I  could  not  help  but  think  it  immeasurably 
superior  as  an  illustration  of  genius  to  the  "Vestiges  of  Creation;" 
and  as  I  admired  the  poem,  (except  the  miserable  attempt  at  humor 
in  what  purports  to  be  a  letter  found  in  a  bottle  floating  on  the  Mare 
tenebrarum,)  so  I  regretted  its  pantheism,  which  is  not  necessary  to  its 
main  design.  To  some  of  the  objections  to  his  work  he  made  this 
answer  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  C.  F.  Hoffman,  then  editor  of  the  "Literary 
World:" 

"Dear  Sir: — In  your  paper  of  July  29,  I  find  some  comments  on  'Eureka,*  a 
late  book  of  my  own ;  and  I  know  you  too  well  to  suppose,  for  a  moment,  that  you 
will  refuse  me  the  privilege  of  a  few  words  in  reply.  I  feel,  even,  that  I  might 


298  APPENDIX 

safely  claim,  from  Mr.  Hoffman,  the  right,  which  every  author  has,  of  replying  to 
his  critic  tone  for  tone — that  is  to  say,  of  answering  your  correspondent,  flippancy 
by  flippancy  and  sneer  by  sneer — but,  in  the  first  place,  I  do  not  wish  to  disgrace 
the  'World' ;  and,  in  the  second,  I  feel  that  I  never  should  be  done  sneering,  in 
the  present  instance,  were  I  once  to  begin.  Lamartine  blames  Voltaire  for  the  use 
which  he  made  of  (ruse)  misrepresentation,  in  his  attacks  on  the  priesthood ;  but 
our  young  students  of  Theology  do  not  seem  to  be  aware  that  in  defence,  or  what 
they  fancy  to  be  defence,  of  Christianity,  there  is  anything  wrong  in  such  gentle 
manly  peccadillos  as  the  deliberate  perversion  of  an  author's  text — to  say  nothing 
of  the  minor  indecora  of  reviewing  a  book  without  reading  it  and  without  having 
the  faintest  suspicion  of  what  it  is  about. 

"You  will  understand  that  it  is  merely  the  misrepresentations  of  the  critique  in 
question  to  which  I  claim  the  privilege  of  reply: — the  mere  opinions  of  the  writer 
can  be  of  no  consequence  to  me — and  I  should  imagine  of  very  little  to  himself — 
that  is  to  say  if  he  knows  himself,  personally,  as  well  as  7  have  the  honor  of  know 
ing  him.  The  first  misrepresentation  is  contained  in  this  sentence: — 'This  letter 
is  a  keen  burlesque  on  the  Aristotelian  or  Baconian  methods  of  ascertaining  Truth, 
both  of  which  the  writer  ridicules  and  despises,  and  pours  forth  his  rhapsodical 
ecstasies  in  a  glorification  of  the  third  mode — the  noble  art  of  guessing.'  What  I 
really  say  is  this : — That  there  is  no  absolute  certainty  either  in  the  Aristotelian  or 
Baconian  process — that,  for  this  reason,  neither  Philosophy  is  so  profound  as  it 
fancies  itself — and  that  neither  has  a  right  to  sneer  at  that  seemingly  imaginative 
process  called  Intuition  (by  which  the  great  Kepler  attained  his  laws;)  since 
'Intuition,'  after  all,  'is  but  the  conviction  arising  from  those  inductions  or  de 
ductions  of  which  the  processes  are  so  shadowy  as  to  escape  our  consciousness, 
elude  our  reason  or  defy  our  capacity  of  expression."  The  second  misrepresenta 
tion  runs  thus : — 'The  developments  of  electricity  and  the  formation  of  stars  and 
suns,  luminous  and  non-luminous,  moons  and  planets,  with  their  rings,  8zc.,  is 
deduced,  very  much  according  to  the  nebular  theory  of  Laplace,  from  the  principle 
propounded  above.'  Now  the  impression  intended  to  be  made  here  upon  the 
reader's  mind,  by  the  'Student  of  Theology,'  is,  evidently,  that  my  theory  may 
all  be  very  well  in  its  way,  but  that  it  is  nothing  but  Laplace  over  again,  with  some 
modifications  that  he  (the  Student  of  Theology)  cannot  regard  asiat  all  important. 
I  have  only  to  say  that  no  gentleman  can  accuse  me  of  the  disingenuousness  here 
implied;  inasmuch  as,  having  proceeded  with  my  theory  up  to  that  point  at  which 
Laplace's  theory  meets  it,  I  then  give  Laplace's  theory  in  full,  with  the  expression 
of  my  firm  conviction  of  its  absolute  truth  at  all  points.  The  ground  covered  by 
the  great  French  astronomer  compares  with  that  covered  by  my  theory,  as  a 
bubble  compares  with  the  ocean  on  which  it  floats ;  nor  has  he  the  slightest  allusion 
to  the  'principle  propounded  above,'  the  principle  of  Unity  being  the  source  of  all 
things — the  principle  of  Gravity  being  merely  the  Reaction  of  the  Divine  Act 
which  irradiated  all  things  from  Unity.  In  fact,  no  point  of  my  theory  has  been 
even  so  much  as  alluded  to  by  Laplace.  I  have  not  considered  it  necessary,  here, 
to  speak  of  the  astronomical  knowledge  displayed  in  the  'stars  and  suns'  of  the 
Student  of  Theology,  nor  to  hint  that  it  would  be  better  grammar  to  say  that 
'development  and  formation'  are,  than  that  development  and  formation  is.  The 
third  misrepresentation  lies  in  a  foot-note,  where  the  critic  says: — 'Further  than 
this,  Mr.  Poe's  claim  that  he  can  account  for  the  existence  of  all  organized  beings — 
man  included — merely  from  those  principles  on  which  the  origin  and  present  ap- 


APPENDIX  299 

pearance  of  suns  and  worlds  are  explained,  must  be  set  down  as  mere  bald  asser 
tion,  without  a  particle  of  evidence.  In  other  words  we  should  term  it  arrant 
fudge.'  The  perversion  at  this  point  is  involved  in  a  wilful  misapplication  of  the 
word  'principles.'  I  say  'wilful' ;  because,  at  page  63,  I  am  particularly  careful  to 
distinguish  between  the  principles  proper,  Attraction  and  Repulsion,  and  those 
merely  resultant  sub-principles  which  control  the  universe  in  detail.  To  these  sub- 
principles,  swayed  by  the  immediate  spiritual  influence  of  Deity,  I  leave,  without 
examination,  all  that  which  the  Student  of  Theology  so  roundly  asserts  I  account 
for  on  the  principles  which  account  for  the  constitution  of  suns,  &c. 

"In  the  third  column  of  his  'review,'  the  critic  says: — 'He  asserts  that  each  soul 
is  its  own  God — its  own  Creator.'  What  I  do  assert  is,  that  'each  soul  is,  in  part, 
its  own  God — its  own  Creator.'  Just  below,  the  critic  says: — 'After  all  these  con 
tradictory  propoundings  concerning  God  we  would  remind  him  of  what  he  lays 
down  on  page  28 — 'of  this  Godhead  in  itself  he  alone  is  not  imbecile — he  alone  is 
not  impious  who  propounds  nothing.  A  man  who  thus  conclusively  convicts  him 
self  of  imbecility  and  impiety  needs  no  further  refutation.*  Now  the  sentence, 
as  I  wrote  it,  and  as  /  find  it  printed  on  that  very  page  which  the  critic  refers  to 
and  which  must  have  been  lying  before  him  while  he  quoted  my  words,  runs  thus: — 
'Of  this  Godhead,  in  itself,  he  alone  is  not  imbecile,  &c.,  who  propounds  nothing." 
By  the  italics,  as  the  critic  well  knew,  I  design  to  distinguish  between  the  two 
possibilities — that  of  a  knowledge  of  God  through  his  works  and  that  of  a  knowl 
edge  of  Him  in  his  essential  nature.  The  Godhead,  in  itself,  is  distinguished  from 
the  Godhead  observed  in  its  effects.  But  our  critic  is  zealous.  Moreover,  being  a 
divine,  he  is  honest — ingenuous.  It  is  his  duty  to  pervert  my  meaning  by  omitting 
my  italics — just  as,  in  the  sentence  previously  quoted,  it  was  his  Christian  duty 
to  falsify  my  argument  by  leaving  out  the  two  words,  'in  part,'  upon  which  turns 
the  whole  force — indeed  the  whole  intelligibility  of  my  proposition. 

"Were  these  'misrepresentations'  (is  that  the  name  for  them?)  made  for  any  less 
serious  a  purpose  than  that  of  branding  my  book  as  'impious'  and  myself  as  a 
'pantheist,'  a  'polytheist,'  a  Pagan,  or  a  God  knows  what  (and  indeed  I  care  very 
little  so  it  be  not  a  'Student  of  Theology,')  I  would  have  permitted  their  dishonesty 
to  pass  unnoticed,  through  pure  contempt  for  the  boyishness — for  the  turn-down- 
shirt-collar-ness  of  their  tone: — but,  as  it  is,  you  will  pardon  me,  Mr.  Editor,  that 
I  have  been  compelled  to  expose  a  'critic'  who,  courageously  preserving  his  own 
anonymosity,  takes  advantage  of  my  absence  from  the  city  to  misrepresent,  and 
thus  villify  me,  by  name. 

"Fordham,  September  20,  1848."  "EDGAR  A.  POE." 

From  this  time  Poe  did  not  write  much ;  he  had  quarrelled  with  the 
conductors  of  the  chief  magazines  for  which  he  had  previously  written, 
and  they  no  longer  sought  his  assistance.  In  a  letter  to  a  friend,  he 
laments  the  improbabilities  of  an  income  from  literary  labor,  saying : 

"I  have  represented to  you  as  merely  an  ambitious  simpleton,  anxious  to 

get  into  society  with  the  reputation  of  conducting  a  magazine  which  somebody 
behind  the  curtain  always  prevents  him  from  quite  damning  with  his  stupidity ; 
he  is  a  knave-and  a  beast.  I  cannot  write  any  more  for  the  Milliner's  Book,  where 

T n  prints  his  feeble  and  very  quietly  made  dilutions  of  other  people's  reviews ; 

and  you  know  that can  afford  to  pay  but  little,  though  I  am  glad  to  do  any- 


300  APPENDIX 

thing  for  a  good  fellow  like .    In  this  emergency  I  sell  articles  to  the  vulgar  and 

trashy ,  for  $5  a  piece.     I  enclose  my  last,  cut  out,  lest  you  should 

see  by  my  sending  the  paper  in  what  company  I  am  forced  to  appear." 

His  name  was  now  frequently  associated  with  that  of  one  of  the 
most  brilliant  women  of  New  England,  and  it  was  publicly  announced 
that  they  were  to  be  married.  He  had  first  seen  her  on  his  way  from 
Boston,  when  he  visited  that  city  to  deliver  a  poem  before  the  Lyceum 
there.  Restless,  near  the  midnight,  he  wandered  from  his  hotel  near 
where  she  lived,  until  he  saw  her  walking  in  a  garden.  He  related  the 
incident  afterward  in  one  of  his  most  exquisite  poems,  worthy  of  him 
self,  of  her,  and  of  the  most  exalted  passion. 

"I  SAW  thee  once — once  only — years  ago; 
I  must  not  say  how  many — but  not  many. 
It  was  a  July  midnight;  and  from  out 
A  full-orbed  moon,  that,  like  thine  own  soul,  soaring, 
Sought  a  precipitate  pathway  up  through  heaven, 
There  fell  a  silvery-silken  veil  of  light, 
With  quietude,  and  sultriness,  and  slumber, 
Upon  the  upturn'd  faces  of  a  thousand 
Roses  that  grew  in  an  enchanted  garden, 
Where  no  wind  dared  to  stir,  unless  on  tiptoe — 
Fell  on  the  upturn'd  faces  of  these  roses 
That  gave  out,  in  return  for  the  love-light, 
Their  odorous  souls  in  an  ecstatic  death — 
Fell  on  the  upturn'd  faces  of  these  roses 
That  smiled  and  died  in  this  parterre,  enchanted 
By  thee,  and  by  the  poetry  of  thy  presence. 

"Clad  all  in  white,  upon  a  violet  bank 
I  saw  thee  half  reclining;  while  the  moon 
Fell  on  the  upturn'd  faces  of  the  roses, 
And  on  thine  own,  upturn'd — alas,  in  sorrow ! 

"Was  it  not  Fate,  that,  on  this  July  midnight- 
Was  it  not  Fate,  (whose  name  is  also  Sorrow,) 
That  bade  me  pause  before  that  garden-gate, 
To  breathe  the  incense  of  those  slumbering  roses  ? 
No  footstep  stirred ;  the  hated  world  all  slept, 
Save  only  thee  and  me.    (Oh,  Heaven! — oh,  God! 
How  my  heart  beats  in  coupling  those  two  words!) 
Save  only  thee  and  me.    I  paused — I  looked — 
And  in  an  instant  all  things  disappeared. 
(Ah,  bear  in  mind  this  garden  was  enchanted!) 
The  pearly  lustre  of  the  moon  went  out: 
The  mossy  banks  and  the  meandering  paths, 
The  happy  flowers  and  the  repining  trees, 
Were  seen  no  more:  the  very  roses'  odors 
Died  in  the  arms  of  the  adoring  airs. 


APPENDIX  301 

All — all  expired  save  thee — save  less  than  thou: 
Save  only  the  divine  light  in  thing  eyes — 
Save  but  the  soul  in  thine  uplifted  eyes. 
I  saw  but  them — they  were  the  world  to  me. 
I  saw  but  them — saw  only  them  for  hours — 
Saw  only  them  until  the  moon  went  down. 
What  wild  heart-histories  seemed  to  lie  enwritten 
Upon  those  crystalline,  celestial  spheres ! 
How  dark  a  wo!  yet  how  sublime  a  hope! 
How  silently  serene  a  sea  of  pride! 
How  daring  an  ambition!  yet  how  deep — 
How  fathomless  a  capacity  for  love! 

"But  now,  at  length,  dear  Dian  sank  from  sight 
Into  a  western  couch  of  thunder-cloud; 
And  thou,  a  ghost,  amid  the  entombing  trees 
Didst  glide  away.    Only  thine  eyes  remained. 
They  would  not  go — they  never  yet  have  gone. 
Lighting  my  lonely  pathway  home  that  night, 
They  have  not  left  me  (as  my  hopes  have)  since. 
They  follow  me — they  lead  me  through  the  years. 
They  are  my  ministers — yet  I  their  slave. 
Their  office  is  to  illumine  and  enkindle — 
My  duty,  to  be  saved  by  their  bright  light, 
And  purified  in  their  electric  fire, 
And  sanctified  in  their  elysian  fire. 
They  fill  my  soul  with  Beauty  (which  is  Hope,) 
And  are  far  up  in  Heaven — the  stars  I  kneel  to 
In  the  sad,  silent  watches  of  my  night; 
While  even  in  the  meridian  glare  of  day 
I  see  them  still — two  sweetly  scintillant 
Venuses,  unextinguished  by  the  sun!" 

They  were  not  married,  and  the  breaking  of  the  engagement  affords 
a  striking  illustration  of  his  character.  He  said  to  an  acquaintance 
in  New  York,  who  congratulated  with  him  upon  the  prospect  of  his 
union  with  a  person  of  so  much  genius  and  so  many  virtues — "It  is  a 
mistake:  I  am  not  going  to  be  married."  "Why,  Mr.  Poe,  I  under 
stand  that  the  banns  have  been  published."  "I  cannot  help  what 
you  have  heard,  my  dear  Madam:  but  mark  me,  I  shall  not  marry 
her."  He  left  town  the  same  evening,  and  the  next  day  was  reeling 
through  the  streets  of  the  city  which  was  the  lady's  home,  and  in  the 
evening — that  should  have  been  the  evening  before  the  bridal — in  his 
drunkenness  he  committed  at  her  house  such  outrages  as  made  neces 
sary  a  summons  of  the  police.  Here  was  no  insanity  leading  to  indul 
gence  :  he  went  from  New  York  with  a  determination  thus  to  induce 
an  ending  of  the  engagement;  and  he  succeeded. 


\  V- 


302  APPENDIX 

Sometime  in  August,  1849,  Mr.  Poe  left  New- York  for  Virginia. 
In  Philadelphia  he  encountered  persons  who  had  been  his  associates 
in  dissipations  while  he  lived  there,  and  for  several  days  he  abandoned 
himself  entirely  to  the  control  of  his  worst  appetites.  When  his 
money  was  all  spent,  and  the  disorder  of  his  dress  evinced  the  ex 
tremity  of  his  recent  intoxication,  he  asked  in  charity  means  for  the 
prosecution  of  his  journey  to  Richmond.  There,  after  a  few  days,  he 
joined  a  temperance  society,  and  his  conduct  showed  the  earnestness 
of  his  determination  to  reform  his  life.  He  delivered  in  some  of  the 
principal  towns  of  Virginia  two  lectures,  which  were  well  attended, 
and  renewing  his  acquaintance  with  a  lady  whom  he  had  known  in  his 
youth,  he  was  engaged  to  marry  her,  and  wrote  to  his  friends  that  he 
should  pass  the  remainder  of  his  days  among  the  scenes  endeared  by 
all  his  pleasantest  recollections  of  youth. 

On  Thursday,  the  fourth  of  October,  he  set  out  for  New- York,  to 
fulfil  a  literary  engagement,  and  to  prepare  for  his  marriage.  Arriving 
in  Baltimore  he  gave  his  trunk  to  a  porter,  with  directions  to  convey 
it  to  the  cars  which  were  to  leave  in  an  hour  or  two  for  Philadelphia, 
and  went  into  a  tavern  to  obtain  some  refreshment.  Here  he  met 
acquaintances  who  invited  him  to  drink ;  all  his  resolutions  and  duties 
were  soon  forgotten ;  in  a  few  hours  he  was  in  such  a  state  as  is  com 
monly  induced  only  by  long-continued  intoxication;  after  a  night  of 
insanity  and  exposure,  he  was  carried  to  a  hospital ;  and  there,  on  the 
evening  of  Sunday,  the  seventh  of  October,  1849,  he  died,  at  the  age 
of  thirty-eight  years. 

It  is  a  melancholy  history.  No  author  of  as  much  genius  had  ever 
in  this  country  as  much  unhappiness;  but  Poe's  unhappiness  was  .in 
an  unusual  degree  the  result  of  infirmities  of  nature,  or  of  voluntary 
faults  in  conduct.  A  writer  who  evidently  knew  him  well,  and  who 
comes  before  us  in  the  "Southern  Literary  Messenger"  as  his  de 
fender,  is  "compelled  to  admit  that  the  blemishes  in  his  life  were 
effects  of  character  rather  than  of  circumstances."*  How  this  char 
acter  might  have  been  modified  by  a  judicious  education  of  all  his 
faculties  I  leave  for  the  decision  of  others,  but  it  will  be  evident  to 
those  who  read  this  biography  that  the  unchecked  freedom  of  his 
earlier  years  was  as  unwise  as  its  results  were  unfortunate. 

It  is  contended  that  the  higher  intelligences,  in  the  scrutiny  to  which 
they  appeal,  are  not  to  be  judged  by  the  common  laws;  but  I  appre 
hend  that  this  doctrine,  as  it  is  likely  to  be  understood,  is  entirely 

^Southern  Literary  Messenger,  Mar«h,  1850,  p.  179. 


APPENDIX  303 

wrong.  All  men  are  amenable  to  the  same  principles,  to  the  extent 
of  the  parallelism  of  these  principles  with  their  experience;  and  the 
line  of  duty  becomes  only  more  severe  as  it  extends  into  the  clearer 
atmosphere  of  truth  and  beauty  which  is  the  life  of  genius.  De 
mortals  nil  nisi  bonun  is  a  common  and  an  honorable  sentiment,  but 
its  proper  application  would  lead  to  the  suppression  of  the  histories 
of  half  of  the  most  conspicuous  of  mankind ;  in  this  case  it  is  impossible 
on  account  of  the  notoriety  of  Mr.  Poe's  faults ;  and  it  would  be  unjust 
to  the  living  against  whom  his  hands  were  always  raised  and  who  had 
no  resort  but  in  his  outlawry  from  their  sympathies.  Moreover,  his 
career  is  full  of  instruction  and  warning,  and  it  has  always  been  made 
a  portion  of  the  penalty  of  wrong  that  its  anatomy  should  be  displayed 
for  the  common  study  and  advantage. 

The  character  of  Mr.  Poe's  genius  has  been  so  recently  and  so 
admirably  discussed  by  Mr.  Lowell,  with  whose  opinions  on  the  sub 
ject  I  for  the  most  part  agree,  that  I  shall  say  but  little  of  it  here, 
having  already  extended  this  notice  beyond  the  limits  at  first  de 
signed.  There  is  a  singular  harmony  between  his  personal  and  his 
literary  qualities.  St.  Pierre,  who  seemed  to  be  without  any  nobility 
in  his  own  nature,  in  his  writings  appeared  to  be  moved  only  by  the 
finest  and  highest  impulses.  Poe  exhibits  scarcely  any  virtue  in  either 
his  life  or  his  writings.  Probably  there  is  not  another  instance  in  the 
literature  of  our  language  in  which  so  much  has  been  accomplished 
without  a  recognition  or  a  manifestation  of  conscience.  Seated  be 
hind  the  intelligence,  and  directing  it,  according  to  its  capacities, 
Conscience  is  the  parent  of  whatever  is  absolutely  and  unquestionably 
beautiful  in  art  as  well  as  in  conduct.  It  touches  the  creations  of  the 
mind  and  they  have  life;  without  it  they  have  never,  in  the  range  of 
its  just  action,  the  truth  and  naturalness  which  are  approved  by 
universal  taste  or  in  enduring  reputation.  In  Poe's  works  there  is 
constantly  displayed  the  most  touching  melancholy,  the  most  extreme 
and  terrible  despair,  but  never  reverence  or  remorse. 

His  genius  was  peculiar,  and  not,  as  he  himself  thought,  various. 
He  remarks  in  one  of  his  letters : 

"There  is  one  particular  in  which  I  have  had  wrong  done  me,  and  it  may  not  be 
indecorous  in  me  to  call  your  attention  to  it.  The  last  selection  of  my  tales  was 
made  from  about  seventy  by  one  of  our  great  little  cliquists  and  claquers,  Wiley 
and  Putnam's  reader,  Duyckinck.  He  has  what  he  thinks  a  taste  for  ratiocina 
tion,  and  has  accordingly  made  up  the  book  mostly  of  analytic  stories.  But  this 
is  not  representing  my  mind  in  its  various  phases — it  is  not  giving  me  fair  play. 
In  writing  these  tales  one  by  one,  at  long  intervals,  I  have  kept  the  book  unity 


304  APPENDIX 

always  in  mind — that  is,  each  has  been  composed  with  reference  to  its  effect  as 
part  of  a  whole.  In  this  view,  one  of  my  chief  aims  has  been  the  widest  diversity 
of  subject,  thought,  and  especially  tone  and  manner  of  handling.  Were  all  my 
tales  now  before  me  in  a  large  volume,  and  as  the  composition  of  another,  the 
merit  which  would  principally  arrest  my  attention  would  be  their  wide  diversity 
and  variety.  You  will  be  surprised  to  hear  me  say  that,  (omitting  one  or  two  of  my 
first  efforts,)  I  do  not  consider  any  one  of  my  stories  better  than  another.  There 
is  a  vast  variety  of  kinds,  and,  in  degree  of  value,  these  kinds  vary — but  each  tale 
is  equally  good  of  its  kind.  The  loftiest  kind  is  that  of  the  highest  imagination — 
and  for  this  reason  only  'Ligeia'  may  be  called  my  best  tale." 

But  it  seems  to  me  that  this  selection  of  his  tales  was  altogether 
judicious.  Had  it  been  submitted  to  me  I  might  indeed  have  changed 
it  in  one  or  two  instances,  but  I  should  not  have  replaced  any  tale  by 
one  of  a  different  tone.  One  of  the  qualities  upon  which  Poe  prided 
himself  was  his  humor,  and  he  has  left  us  a  large  number  of  composi 
tions  in  this  department,  but  except  a  few  paragraphs  in  his  "Margi 
nalia,"  scarcely  anything  which  it  would  not  have  been  injurious  to 
his  reputation  to  republish.  His  realm  was  on  the  shadowy  confines 
of  human  experience,  among  the  abodes  of  crime,  gloom,  and  horror, 
and  there  he  delighted  to  surround  himself  with  images  of  beauty  and 
of  terror,  to  raise  his  solemn  palaces  and  towers  and  spires  in  a  night 
upon  which  should  rise  no  sun.  His  minuteness  of  detail,  refinement 
of  reasoning,  and  propriety  and  power  of  language — the  perfect  keep 
ing  (to  borrow  a  phrase  from  another  domain  of  art)  and  apparent 
good  faith  with  which  he  managed  the  evocation  and  exhibition  of 
his  strange  and  spectral  and  revolting  creations — gave  him  an  aston 
ishing  mastery  over  his  readers,  so  that  his  books  were  closed  as  one 
would  lay  aside  the  nightmare  or  the  spells  of  opium.  The  analytical 
subtlety  evinced  in  his  works  has  frequently  been  over  estimated, 
as  I  have  before  observed,  because  it  has  not  been  sufficiently  con 
sidered  that  his  mysteries  were  composed  with  the  express  design  of 
being  dissolved.  When  Poe  attempted  the  illustration  of  the  pro- 
founder  operations  of  the  mind,  as  displayed  in  written  reason  or  in 
real  action,  he  frequently  failed  entirely. 

In  poetry,  as  in  prose,  he  was  eminently  successful  in  the  metaphysi 
cal  treatment  of  the  passions.  His  poems  are  constructed  with  won 
derful  ingenuity,  and  finished  with  consummate  art.  They  display 
a  sombre  and  weird  imagination,  and  a  taste  almost  faultless  in  the 
apprehension  of  that  sort  of  beauty  which  was  most  agreeable  to  his 
temper.  But  they  evince  little  genuine  feeling,  and  less  of  that  spon 
taneous  ecstacy  which  gives  its  freedom,  smoothness  and  naturalness 
to  immortal  verse.  His  own  account  of  the  composition  of  "The 


APPENDIX  305 

Raven,"  discloses  his  methods — the  absence  of  all  impulse,  and  the 
absolute  control  of  calculation  and  mechanism.  That  curious  analysis 
of  the  processes  by  which  he  wrought  would  be  incredible  if  from 
another  hand. 

He  was  not  remarkably  original  in  invention.  Indeed  some  of  his 
plagiarisms  are  scarcely  paralleled  for  their  audacity  in  all  literary 
history:  For  instance,  in  his  tale  of  "The  Pit  and  the  Pendulum,"  the 
complicate  machinery  upon  which  the  interest  depends  is  borrowed 
from  a  story  entitled  "Vivenzio,  or  Italian  Vengeance,"  by  the  author 
of  "The  First  and  Last  Dinner,"  in  "Blackwood's  Magazine."  And 
I  remember  having  been  shown  by  Mr.  Longfellow,  several  years  ago, 
a  series  of  papers  which  constitute  a  demonstration  that  Mr.  Poe  was 
indebted  to  him  for  the  idea  of  "The  Haunted  Palace,"  one  of  the 
most  admirable  of  his  poems,  which  he  so  pertinaciously  asserted  had 
been  used  by  Mr.  Longfellow  in  the  production  of  his  "Beleaguered 
City."  Mr.  Longfellow's  poem  was  written  two  or  three  years  before 
the  first  publication  of  that  by  Poe,  and  it  was  during  a  portion  of 
this  time  in  Poe's  possession;  but  it  was  not  printed,  I  believe,  until 
a  few  weeks  after  the  appearance  of  "The  Haunted  Palace."  "It 
would  be  absurd,"  as  Poe  himself  said  many  times,  "to  believe  the 
similarity  of  these  pieces  entirely  accidental."  This  was  the  first 
cause  of  all  that  malignant  criticism  which  for  so  many  years  he  car 
ried  on  against  Mr.  Longfellow.  In  his  "Marginalia"  he  borrowed 
largely,  especially  from  Coleridge,  and  I  have  omitted  in  the  repub- 
lication  of  these  papers,  numerous  paragraphs  which  were  rather  com 
piled  than  borrowed  from  one  of  the  profoundest  and  wisest  of  our 
own  scholars.* 

*I  have  neither  space,  time,  nor  inclination  for  a  continuation  of  this  subject,  and 
I  add  but  one  other  instance,  in  the  words  of  the  Philadelphia  "Saturday  Evening 
Post," — published  while  Mr.  Poe  was  living: 

*'One  of  the  most  remarkable  plagiarisms  was  perpetrated  by  Mr.  Poe,  late  of 
the  Broadway  Journal,  whose  harshness  as  a  critic  and  assumption  of  peculiar 
originality,  makes  the  fault,  in  his  case,  more  glaring.  This  gentleman,  a  few 
years  ago,  in  Philadelphia,  published  a  work  on  Conchology  as  original,  when  in 
reality  it  was  a  copy,  nearly  verbatim,  of  'The  Text-Book  of  Conchology,  by 
Capt.  Thomas  Brown,'  printed  in  Glasgow  in  1833,  a  duplicate  of  which  we  have 
in  our  library.  Mr.  Poe  actually  took  out  a  copyright  for  the  American  edition 
of  Capt.  Brown's  work,  and,  omitting  all  mention  of  the  English  original,  pre 
tended,  in  the  preface,  to  have  been  under  great  obligations  to  several  scientific 
gentlemen  of  this  city.  It  is  but  justice  to  add,  that  in  the  second  edition  of  this 
book,  published  lately  in  Philadelphia,  the  name  of  Mr.  Poe  is  withdrawn  from 
the  title-page,  and  his  initials  only  affixed  to  the  preface.  But  the  affair  is  one  of 
the  most  curious  on  record." 


306  APPENDIX 

In  criticism,  as  Mr.  Lowell  justly  remarks,  Mr.  Poe  had  "a  scientific 
precision  and  coherence  of  logic;"  he  had  remarkable  dexterity  in  the 
dissection  of  sentences;  but  he  rarely  ascended  from  the  particular  to 
the  general,  from  subjects  to  principles:  he  was  familiar  with  the 
microscope  but  never  looked  through  the  telescope.  His  criticisms 
are  of  value  to  the  degree  in  which  they  are  demonstrative,  but  his 
unsupported  assertions  and  opinions  were  so  apt  to  be  influenced  by 
friendship  or  enmity,  by  the  desire  to  please  or  the  fear  to  offend,  or 
by  his  constant  ambition  to  surprise,  or  produce  a  sensation,  that 
they  should  be  received  in  all  cases  with  distrust  of  their  fairness.  A 
volume  might  be  filled  with  literary  judgments  by  him  as  antagonisti- 
cal  and  inconsistent  as  the  sharpest  antitheses.  For  example,  when 
Mr.  Laugh  ton  Osborn's  romance,  "The  Confessions  of  a  Poet,"  came 
out,  he  reviewed  it  in  "The  Southern  Literary  Messenger,"  saying: 

"There  is  nothing  of  the  vates  about  the  author.  He  is  no  poet — and  most  posi 
tively  he  is  no  prophet.  He  avers  upon  his  word  of  honor  that  in  commencing  this 
work  he  loads  a  pistol  and  places  it  upon  the  table.  He  further  states  that,  upon 
coming  to  a  conclusion,  it  is  his  intention  to  blow  out  what  he  supposes  to  be  his 
brains.  Now  this  is  excellent.  But,  even  with  so  rapid  a  writer  as  the  poet  must 
undoubtedly  be,  there  would  be  some  little  difficulty  in  completing  the  book  under 
thirty  days  or  thereabouts.  The  best  of  powder  is  apt  to  sustain  injury  by  lying 
so  long  'in  the  load.'  We  sincerely  hope  the  gentleman  took  the  precaution  to 
examine  his  priming  before  attempting  the  rash  act.  A  flash  in  the  pan — and  in 
such  a  case — were  a  thing  to  be  lamented.  Indeed  there  would  be  no  answer 
ing  for  the  consequences.  We  might  even  have  a  second  series  of  the  'Con 
fessions.'" — Southern  Literary  Messenger,  i.  459. 

This  review  was  attacked,  particularly  in  the  Richmond  "Com 
piler,"  and  Mr.  Poe  felt  himself  called  upon  to  vindicate  it  to  the  pro 
prietor  of  the  magazine,  to  whom  he  wrote : 

"There  is  no  necessity  of  giving  the  'Compiler'  a  reply.  The  book  is  silly 
enough  of  itself,  without  the  aid  of  any  controversy  concerning  it.  I  have  read  it, 
from  beginning  to  end,  and  was  very  much  amused  at  it.  My  opinion  of  it  is 
pretty  nearly  the  opinion  of  the  press  at  large.  I  have  heard'  no  person  offer  one 
serious  word  in  its  defence." — Letter  to  T.  W.  White. 

Afterwards  Mr.  Poe  became  personally  acquainted  with  the  author 
and  he  then  wrote,  in  his  account  of  "The  Literati  of  New- York  City," 
as  follows: 

"The  Confessions  of  a  Poet  made  much  noise  in  the  literary  world,  and  no  little 
curiosity  was  excited  in  regard  to  its  author,  who  was  generally  supposed  to  be 
John  Neal.  .  .  .  The  'Confessions,'  however,  far  surpassed  any  production  of  Mr. 
Neal's  .  .  .  He  has  done  nothing  which,  as  a  whole,  is  even  respectable,  and  The 


APPENDIX  307 

Confessions'  are  quite  remarkable  for  their  artistic  unity  and  perfection.  But  on 
higher  regards  they  are  to  be  commended.  /  do  not  think,  indeed,  that  a  better  book 
of  its  kind  has  been  written  in  America.  ...  Its  scenes  of  passion  are  intensely 
wrought,  its  incidents  are  striking  and  original,  its  sentiments  audacious  and  sug 
gestive  at  least,  if  not  at  all  times  tenable.  In  a  word,  it  is  that  rare  thing,  a  fiction 
of  power  without  rudeness." 

I  will  adduce  another  example  of  the  same  kind.  In  a  notice  of  the 
"Democratic  Review,"  for  September,  1845,  Mr.  Poe  remarks  of  Mr. 
William  A.  Jone's  paper  on  American  Humor: 

"There  is  only  one  really  bad  article  in  the  number,  and  that  is  insufferable:  nor 
do  we  think  it  the  less  a  nuisance  because  it  inflicts  upon  ourselves  individually  a 
passage  of  maudlin  compliment  about  our  being  a  most  'ingenious  critic'  and 
'prose  poet,'  with  some  other  things  of  a  similar  kind.  We  thank  for  his  good  word 
no  man  who  gives  palpable  evidence,  in  other  cases  than  our  own,  of  his  incapacity, 
to  distinguish  the  false  from  the  true — the  right  from  the  wrong.  If  we  are  an 
ingenious  critic,  or  a  prose  poet,  it  is  not  because  Mr.  William  Jones  says  so.  The 
truth  is  that  this  essay  on  'American  Humor'  is  contemptible  both  in  a  moral  and 
literary  sense — is  the  composition  of  an  imitator  and  a  quack — and  disgraces  the 
magazine  in  which  it  makes  its  appearance." — Broadway  Journal,  Vol.  ii.  No.  11. 

In  the  following  week  he  reconsidered  this  matter,  opening  his  paper 
for  a  defence  of  Mr.  Jones ;  but  at  the  close  of  it  said — 

"If  we  have  done  Mr.  Jones  injustice,  we  beg  his  pardon:  but  we  do  not  think 
we  have," 

Yet  in  a  subsequent  article  in  "Graham's  Magazine,"  on  "Critics 
and  Criticism,"  he  says  of  Mr.  Jones — referring  only  to  writings  of  his 
that  had  been  for  years  before  the  public  when  he  printed  the  above 
paragraphs : 

"Our  most  analytic,  if  not  altogether  our  best  critic,  (Mr.  Whipple,  perhaps,  ex- 
cepted,)  is  Mr.  William  A.  Jones,  author  of  'The  Analyst.'  How  he  would  write 
elaborate  criticisms  I  cannot  say ;  but  his  summary  judgments  of  authors  are,  in 
general,  discriminative  and  profound.  In  fact,  his  papers  on  Emerson  and  on 
Macaulay,  published  in  'Arcturus,'  are  better  than  merely  'profound,'  if  we  take 
the  word  in  its  now  desecrated  sense;  for  they  are  at  once  pointed,  lucid,  and  just : 
— as  summaries,  leaving  nothing  to  be  desired." 

I  will  not  continue  the  display  of  these  inconsistencies.  As  I  have 
already  intimated,  a  volume  might  be  filled  with  passages  to  show 
that  his  criticisms  were  guided  by  no  sense  of  duty,  and  that  his 
opinions  were  so  variable  and  so  liable  to  be  influenced  by  unworthy 
considerations  as  to  be  really  of  no  value  whatever. 

It  was  among  his  remarkable  habits  that  he  preserved  with  scrupu 
lous  care  everything  that  was  published  respecting  himself  or  his 


308  APPENDIX 

works,  and  everything  that  was  written  to  him  in  letters  that  could 
be  used  in  any  way  for  the  establishment  or  extension  of  his  reputa 
tion.  In  Philadelphia,  in  1843,  he  prepared  with  his  own  hands  a 
sketch  of  his  life  for  a  paper  called  "The  Museum."  Many  parts  of  it 
are  untrue,  but  I  refer  to  it  for  the  purpose  of  quoting  a  characteristic 
instance  of  perversion  in  the  reproduction  of  compliments: 

"Of  'William  Wilson,'  Mr.  Washington  Irving  says:  'It  is  managed  in  a  highly 
picturesque  style,  and  its  singular  and  mysterious  interest  is  ably  sustained 
throughout.  In  point  of  mere  style,  it  is,  perhaps,  even  superior  to  'The  House  of 
Usher.*  It  is  simpler.  In  the  latter  composition,  he  seems  to  have  been  dis 
trustful  of  his  effects,  or,  rather,  too  solicitous  of  bringing  them  forth  fully  to  the 
eye,  and  thus,  perhaps,  has  laid  on  too  much  coloring.  He  has  erred,  however, 
on  the  safe  side,  that  of  exurberance,  and  the  evil  might  easily  be  remedied,  by 
relieving  the  style  of  some  of  its  epithets:'  [since  done.]  'There  would  be  no  fear 
of  injuring  the  graphic  effect,  which  is  powerful.'  The  italics  are  Mr.  Irving's 
own." 

Now  Mr.  Irving  had  said  in  a  private  letter  that  he  thought  the 
"House  of  Usher"  was  clever,  and  that  "a  volume  of  similar  stories 
would  be  well  received  by  the  public."  Poe  sent  him  a  magazine  con 
taining  "William  Wilson,"  asking  his  opinion  of  it,  and  Mr.  Irving, 
expressly  declining  to  publish  a  word  upon  the  subject,  remarked  in 
the  same  manner,  that  "the  singular  and  mysterious  interest  is  well 
sustained,"  and  that  in  point  of  style  the  tale  was  "much  better"  than 
the  "House  of  Usher,"  which,  he  says,  "might  be  improved  by  reliev 
ing  the  style  from  some  of  the  epithets :  there  is  no  danger  of  destroy 
ing  the  graphic  effect,  which  is  powerful."  There  is  not  a  word  in 
italics  in  Mr.  Irving's  letter,  the  meaning  of  which  is  quite  changed  by 
Mr.  Poe's  alterations.  And  this  letter  was  not  only  published  in  the 
face  of  an  implied  prohibition,  but  made  to  seem  like  a  deliberately 
expressed  judgment  in  a  public  reviewal.  In  the  same  way  Mr.  Poe 
published  the  following  sentence  as  an  extract  from  a  letter  by  Miss 
Barrett: 

"Our  great  poet,  Mr.  Browning,  author  of  Paracelsus,  etc.  is  enthusiastic  in  his 
admiration  of  the  rhythm." 

But  on  turning  to  Miss  Barrett's  letter  I  find  that  she  wrote : 

"Our  great  poet,  Mr.  Browning,  the  author  of  'Paracelsus,*  and  'Bells  and  Pome 
granates,*  was  struck  much  by  the  rhythm  of  that  poem." 

The  piece  alluded  to  is  "The  Raven." 

It  is  not  true,  as  has  been  frequently  alleged  since  Mr.  Poe's  death, 
that  his  writings  were  above  the  popular  taste,  and  therefore  without 


APPENDIX  309 

a  suitable  market  in  this  country.  His  poems  were  worth  as  much 
to  magazines  as  those  of  Bryant  or  Longfellow,  (though  none  of  the 
publishers  paid  him  half  as  large  a  price  for  them,)  and  his  tales  were 
as  popular  as  those  of  Willis,  who  has  been  commonly  regarded  as 
the  best  magazinist  of  his  time.  He  ceased  to  write  for  "The  Lady's 
Book"  in  consequence  of  a  quarrel  induced  by  Mr.  Godey's  justifiable 
refusal  to  print  in  that  miscellany  his  "Reply  to  Dr.  English,"  and 
though  in  the  poor  fustian  published  under  the  signature  of  "George 
R.  Graham,"  in  answer  to  some  remarks  upon  Poe's  character  in 
"The  Tribune,"  that  individual  is  made  to  assume  a  passionate  friend 
ship  for  the  deceased  author  that  would  have  become  a  Pythias,  it  is 
known  that  the  personal  ill-will  on  both  sides  was  such  that  for  some 
four  or  five  years  not  a  line  by  Poe  was  purchased  for  "Grahams 
Magazine"  To  quote  again  the  "Defence  of  Mr.  Poe"  in  the  "South 
ern  Literary  Messenger:" 

"His  changeable  humors,  his  irregularities,  his  caprices,  his  total  disregard  of 
everything  and  body,  save  the  fancy  in  his  head,  prevented  him  from  doing  well 
in  the  world.  The  evils  and  sufferings  that  poverty  brought  upon  him,  soured  his 
nature,  and  deprived  him  of  faith  in  human  beings.  This  was  evident  to  the  eye — 
he  believed  in  nobody,  and  cared  for  nobody.  Such  a  mental  condition  of  course 
drove  away  all  those  who  would  otherwise  have  stood  by  him  in  his  hours  of  trial. 
He  became,  and  was,  an  Ishmaelite." 

After  having,  in  no  ungenerous  spirit,  presented  the  chief  facts  in 
Mr.  Poe's  history,  not  designedly  exaggerating  his  genius,  which  none 
held  in  higher  admiration,  not  bringing  into  bolder  relief  than  was 
just  and  necessary  his  infirmities,  I  am  glad  to  offer  a  portraiture  of 
some  of  his  social  qualities,  equally  beautiful,  and — so  changeable 
and  inconsistent  was  the  man — as  far  as  it  goes,  truthful.  Speaking 
of  him  one  day  soon  after  his  death,  with  the  late  Mrs.  Osgood,  the 
beauty  of  whose  character  had  made  upon  Poe's  mind  that  impression 
which  it  never  failed  to  produce  upon  minds  capable  of  the  appre 
hension  of  the  finest  traits  in  human  nature,  she  said  she  did  not  doubt 
that  my  view  of  Mr.  Poe,  which  she  knew  indeed  to  be  the  common 
view,  was  perfectly  just,  as  it  regarded  him  in  his  relations  with  men ; 
but  to  women  he  was  different,  and  she  would  write  for  me  some 
recollections  of  him  to  be  placed  beside  my  harsher  judgments  in  any 
notice  of  his  life  that  the  acceptance  of  the  appointment  to  be  his 
literary  executor  might  render  it  necessary  for  me  to  give  to  the  world. 
She  was  an  invalid — dying  of  that  consumption  by  which  in  a  few 
weeks  she  was  removed  to  heaven,  and  calling  for  pillows  to  support 
her  while  she  wrote,  she  drew  this  sketch: 


310  APPENDIX 

"You  ask  me,  my  friend,  to  write  for  you  my  reminiscenses  of  Edgar  Poe.  For 
you,  who  knew  and  understood  my  affectionate  interest  in  him,  and  my  frank 
acknowledgment  of  that  interest  to  all  who  had  a  claim  upon  my  confidence,  for 
you,  I  will  willingly  do  so.  I  think  no  one  could  know  him — no  one  has  known  him 
personally — certainly  no  woman — without  feeling  the  same  interest.  I  can  sin 
cerely  say,  that  although  I  have  frequently  heard  of  aberrations  on  his  part  from 
'the  straight  and  narrow  path/  I  have  never  seen  him  otherwise  than  gentle, 
generous,  well-bred,  and  fastidiously  refined.  To  a  sensitive  and  delicately- 
nurtured  woman,  there  was  a  peculiar  and  irresistible  charm  in  the  chivalric, 
graceful,  and  almost  tender  reverence  with  which  he  invariably  approached  all 
women  who  won  his  respect.  It  was  this  which  first  commanded  and  always  re 
tained  my  regard  for  him. 

"I  have  been  told  that  when  his  sorrows  and  pecuniary  embarrassments  had 
driven  him  to  the  use  of  stimulants,  which  a  less  delicate  organization  might  have 
borne  without  injury,  he  was  in  the  habit  of  speaking  disrespectfully  of  the  ladies 
of  his  acquaintance.  It  is  difficult  for  me  to  believe  this;  for  to  me,  to  whom  he 
came  during  the  year  of  our  acquaintance  for  counsel  and  kindness  in  all  his  many 
anxieties  and  griefs,  he  never  spoke  irreverently  of  any  woman  save  one,  and  then 
only  in  my  defence,  and  though  I  rebuked  him  for  his  momentary  forgetfulness 
of  the  respect  due  to  himself  and  to  me,  I  could  not  but  forgive  the  offence  for  the 
sake  of  the  generous  impulse  which  prompted  it.  Yet  even  were  these  sad  rumors 
true  of  him,  the  wise  and  well-informed  knew  how  to  regard,  as  they  would  the 
impetuous  anger  of  a  spoiled  infant,  balked  of  its  capricious  will,  the  equally 
harmless  and  unmeaning  phrenzy  of  that  stray  child  of  Poetry  and  Passion.  For 
the  few  unwomanly  and  slander-loving  gossips  who  have  injured  him  and  them 
selves  only  by  repeating  his  ravings,  when  in  such  moods  they  have  accepted  his 
society,  I  have  only  to  vouchsafe  my  wonder  and  my  pity.  They  cannot  surely 
harm  the  true  and  pure,  who,  reverencing  his  genius  and  pitying  his  misfortunes 
and  his  errors,  endeavored,  by  their  timely  kindness  and  sympathy,  to  soothe  his 
sad  career. 

"It  was  in  his  own  simple  yet  poetical  home  that,  to  me  the  character  of  Edgar 
Poe  appeared  in  its  most  beautiful  light.  Playful,  affectionate,  witty,  alternately 
docile  and  wayward  as  a  petted  child — for  his  young,  gentle  and  idolized  wife, 
and  for  all  who  came,  he  had  even  in  the  midst  of  his  most  harassing  literary 
duties,  a  kind  word,  a  pleasant  smile,  a  graceful  and  courteous  attention.  At  his 
desk  beneath  the  romantic  picture  of  his  loved  and  lost  Lenore,  he  would  sit,  hour 
after  hour,  patient,  assiduous  and  uncomplaining,  tracing,  in  an  exquisitely  clear 
chirography  and  with  almost  superhuman  swiftness,  the  lightning  thoughts — the 
'rare  and  radiant'  fancies  as  they  flashed  through  his  wonderful  and  ever  wakeful 
brain.  I  recollect,  one  morning,  towards  the  close  of  his  residence  in  this  city, 
when  he  seemed  unusually  gay  and  light-hearted.  Virginia,  his  sweet  wife,  had 
written  me  a  pressing  invitation  to  come  to  them;  and  I,  who  never  could  resist 
her  affectionate  summons,  and  who  enjoyed  his  society  far  more  in  his  own  home 
than  elsewhere,  hastened  to  Amity-street.  I  found  him  just  completing  his  series 
of  papers  entitled  The  Literati  of  New- York.'  'See,'  said  he,  displaying,  in  laugh 
ing  triumph,  several  little  rolls  of  narrow  paper,  (he  always  wrote  thus  for  the 
press,)  'I  am  going  to  show  you,  by  the  difference  of  length  in  these,  the  different 
degrees  of  estimation  in  which  I  hold  all  you  literary  people.  In  each  of  these, 
one  of  you  is  rolled  up  and  fully  discussed.  Come,  Virginia,  help  me!'  And  one 


APPENDIX  311 

by  one  they  unfolded  them.  At  last  they  came  to  one  which  seemed  interminable. 
Virginia  laughingly  ran  to  one  corner  of  the  room  with  one  end,  and  her  husband 
to  the  opposite  with  the  other.  'And  whose  lengthened  sweetness  long  drawn 
out  is  that?'  said  I.  'Hear  her!'  he  cried,  'just  as  if  her  little  vain  heart  didn't  tell 
her  it's  herself!' 

"My  first  meeting  with  the  poet  was  at  the  Astor  House.  A  few  days  previous, 
Mr.  Willis  had  handed  me,  at  the  table  dhote,  that  strange  and  thrilling  poem 
entitled  'The  Raven,'  saying  that  the  author  wanted  my  opinion  of  it.  Its  effect 
upon  me  was  so  singular,  so  like  that  of  'wierd,  unearthly  music,*  that  it  was  with  a 
feeling  almost  of  dread,  I  heard  he  desired  an  introduction.  Yet  I  could  not  refuse 
without  seeming  ungrateful,  because  I  had  just  heard  of  his  enthusiastic  and 
partial  eulogy  of  my  writings,  in  his  lecture  on  American  Literature.  I  shall  never 
forget  the  morning  when  I  was  summoned  to  the  drawing-room  by  Mr.  Willis 
to  receive  him.  With  his  proud  and  beautiful  head  erect,  his  dark  eyes  flashing 
with  the  elective  light  of  feeling  and  of  thought,  a  peculiar,  an  inimitable  blending 
of  sweetness  and  hauteur  in  his  expression  and  manner,  he  greeted  me,  calmly, 
gravely,  almost  coldly;  yet  with  so  marked  an  earnestness  that  I  could  not  help 
being  deeply  impressed  by  it.  From  that  moment  until  his  death  we  were  friends ; 
although  we  met  only  during  the  first  year  of  our  acquaintance.  And  in  his  last 
words,  ere  reason  had  forever  left  her  imperial  throne  in  that  overtasked  brain, 
I  have  a  touching  memento  of  his  undying  faith  and  friendship. 

"During  that  year,  while  travelling  for  my  health,  I  maintained  a  correspond 
ence  with  Mr.  Poe,  in  accordance  with  the  earnest  entreaties  of  his  wife,  who 
imagined  that  my  influence  over  him  had  a  restraining  and  beneficial  effect.  It 
had,  as  far  as  this — that  having  solemnly  promised  me  to  give  up  the  use  of 
stimulants,  he  so  firmly  respected  his  promise  and  me,  as  never  once,  during  our 
whole  acquaintance,  to  appear  in  my  presence  when  in  the  slightest  degree  affected 
by  them.  Of  the  charming  love  and  confidence  that  existed  between  his  wife  and 
himself,  always  delightfully  apparent  to  me,  in  spite  of  the  many  little  poetical 
episodes,  in  which  the  impassioned  romance  of  his  temperament  impelled  him  to 
indulge ;  of  this  I  cannot  speak  too  earnestly — too  warmly.  I  believe  she  was  the 
only  woman  whom  he  ever  truly  loved;  and  this  is  evidenced  by  the  exquisite 
pathos  of  the  little  poem  lately  written,  called  Annabel  Lee,  of  which  she  was  the 
subject,  and  which  is  by  far  the  most  natural,  simple,  tender  and  touchingly  beau 
tiful  of  all  his  songs.  I  have  heard  it  said  that  it  was  intended  to  illustrate  a  late 
love  affair  of  the  author;  but  they  who  believe  this,  have  in  their  dullness,  evi 
dently  misunderstood  or  missed  the  beautiful  meaning  latent  in  the  most  lovely 
of  all  its  verses — where  he  says, 

"A  wind  blew  out  of  a  cloud,  chilling 

My  beautiful  Annabel  Lee, 
So  that  her  high-born  kinsmen  came, 
And  bore  her  away  from  me." 

"There  seems  a  strange  and  almost  profane  disregard  of  the  sacred  purity  and 
spiritual  tenderness  of  this  delicious  ballad,  in  thus  overlooking  the  allusion  to  the 
kindred  angels  and  the  heavenly  Father  of  the  lost  and  loved  and  unforgotten  wife. 

"But  it  was  in  his  conversations  and  his  letters,  far  more  than  in  his  published 
poetry  and  prose  writings,  that  the  genius  of  Poe  was  most  gloriously  revealed. 
His  letters  were  divinely  beautiful,  and  for  hours  I  have  listened  to  him,  entranced 


312  APPENDIX 

by  strains  of  such  pure  and  almost  celestial  eloquence  as  I  have  never  read  or 
heard  elsewhere.    Alas !  in  the  thrilling  words  of  Stoddard, 

"He  might  have  soared  in  the  morning  light, 
But  he  built  his  nest  with  the  birds  of  night ! 
But  he  lies  in  dust,  and  the  stone  is  rolled 
Over  the  sepulchre  dim  and  cold ; 
He  has  cancelled  all  he  has  done  or  said, 
And  gone  to  the  dear  and  holy  dead. 
Let  us  forget  the  path  he  trod, 
And  leave  him  now,  to  his  Maker,  God." 

The  influence  of  Mr.  Poe's  aims  and  vicissitudes  upon  his  literature, 
was  more  conspicuous  in  his  later  than  in  his  earlier  writings.  Nearly 
all  that  he  wrote  in  the  last  two  or  three  years — including  much  of  his 
best  poetry, — was  in  some  sense  biographical;  in  draperies  of  his 
imagination,  those  who  take  the  trouble  to  trace  his  steps,  will  per 
ceive,  but  slightly  concealed,  the  figure  of  himself.  The  lineaments 
here  disclosed,  I  think,  are  not  different  from  those  displayed  in  this 
biography,  which  is  but  a  filling  up  of  the  picture.  Thus  far  the  few 
criticisms  of  his  life  or  works  that  I  have  ventured  have  been  sug 
gested  by  the  immediate  examination  of  the  points  to  which  they 
referred.  I  add  but  a  few  words,  of  more  general  description. 

In  person  he  was  below  the  middle  height,  slenderly  but  compactly 
formed,  and  in  his  better  moments  he  had  in  an  eminent  degree  that 
air  of  gentlemanliness  which  men  of  a  lower  order  seldom  succeed  in 
acquiring. 

His  conversation  was  at  times  almost  supra-mortal  in  its  eloquence. 
His  voice  was  modulated  with  astonishing  skill,  and  his  large  and 
variably  expressive  eyes  looked  repose  or  shot  fiery  tumult  into  theirs 
who  listened,  while  his  own  face  glowed,  or  was  changeless  in  pallor, 
as  his  imagination  quickened  his  blood  or  drew  it  back  frozen  to  his 
heart.  His  imagery  was  from  the  worlds  which  no  mortals  can  see 
but  with  the  vision  of  genius.  Suddenly  starting  from  a  proposition, 
exactly  and  sharply  defined,  in  terms  of  utmost  simplicity  and  clear 
ness,  he  rejected  the  forms  of  customary  logic,  and  by  a  crystalline 
process  of  accretion,  built  up  his  ocular  demonstrations  in  forms  of 
gloomiest  and  ghastliest  grandeur,  or  in  those  of  the  most  airy  and 
delicious  beauty — so  minutely  and  distinctly,  yet  so  rapidly,  that  the 
attention  which  was  yielded  to  him  was  chained  till  it  stood  among  his 
wonderful  creations — till  he  himself  dissolved  the  spell,  and  brought 


APPENDIX  313 

his  hearers  back  to  common  and  base  existence,  by  vulgar  fancies  or 
exhibitions  of  the  ignoblest  passion. 

He  was  at  all  times  a  dreamer — dwelling  in  ideal  realms — in  heaven 
or  hell — peopled  with  the  creatures  and  the  accidents  of  his  brain. 
He  walked  the  streets,  in  madness  or  melancholy,  with  lips  moving  in 
distinct  curses,  or  with  eyes  upturned  in  passionate  prayer,  (never 
for  himself,  for  he  felt,  or  professed  to  feel,  that  he  was  already 
damned,  but)  for  their  happiness  who  at  the  moment  were  objects  of 
his  idolatry; — or,  with  his  glances  introverted  to  a  heart  gnawed  with 
anguish,  and  with  a  face  shrouded  in  gloom,  he  would  brave  the 
wildest  storms;  and  all  night,  with  drenched  garments  and  arms  beat 
ing  the  winds  and  rains,  would  speak  as  if  to  spirits  that  at  such  times 
only  could  be  evoked  by  him  from  the  Aidenn,  close  by  whose  portals 
his  disturbed  soul  sought  to  forget  the  ills  to  which  his  constitution 
subjected  him — close  by  the  Aidenn  where  were  those  he  loved — the 
Aidenn  which  he  might  never  see,  but  in  fitful  glimpses,  as  its  gates 
opened  to  receive  the  less  fiery  and  more  happy  natures  whose  destiny 
to  sin  did  not  involve  the  doom  of  death. 

He  seemed,  except  when  some  fitful  pursuit  subjugated  his  will  and 
engrossed  his  faculties,  always  to  bear  the  memory  of  some  controlling 
sorrow.  The  remarkable  poem  of  "The  Raven"  was  probably  much 
more  nearly  than  has  been  supposed,  even  by  those  who  were  very 
intimate  with  him,  a  reflection  and  an  echo  of  his  own  history.  He 
was  that  bird's 

" unhappy  master  whom  unmerciful  Disaster 

Followed  fast  and  followed  faster  till  his  songs  one  burden  bore — 
Till  the  dirges  of  his  Hope  that  melancholy  burden  bore 

Of  '  Never — never  more 

Every  genuine  author,  in  a  greater  or  less  degree,  leaves  in  his  works, 
whatever  their  design,  traces  of  his  personal  character:  elements  of 
his  immortal  being,  in  which  the  individual  survives  the  person.  While 
we  read  the  pages  of  the  "Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher,"  or  of  "Mesmeric 
Revelations,"  we  see  in  the  solemn  and  stately  gloom  which  invests 
one  and  in  the  subtle  metaphysical  analysis  of  both,  indications  of 
the  idiosyncracies — of  what  was  most  remarkable  and  peculiar — in 
the  author's  intellectual  nature.  But  we  see  here  only  the  better 
phases  of  his  nature,  only  the  symbols  of  his  juster  action,  for  his 
harsh  experience  had  deprived  him  of  all  faith,  in  man  or  woman. 
He  had  made  up  his  mind  upon  the  numberless  complexities  of  the 
social  world,  and  the  whole  system  with  him  was  an  imposture.  This 


314  APPENDIX 

conviction  gave  a  direction  to  his  shrewd  and  naturally  unamiable 
character.  Still,  though  he  regarded  society  as  composed  altogether  of 
villains,  the  sharpness  of  his  intellect  was  not  of  that  kind  which 
enabled  him  to  cope  with  villany,  while  it  continually  caused  him  by 
overshots  to  fail  of  the  success  of  honesty.  He  was  in  many  respects 
like  Francis  Vivian,  in  Bulwer's  novel  of  "The  Caxtons."  Passion, 
in  him,  comprehended  many  of  the  worst  emotions  which  militate 
against  human  happiness.  You  could  not  contradict  him,  but  you 
raised  quick  choler;  you  could  not  speak  of  wealth,  but  his  cheek 
paled  with  gnawing  envy.  The  astonishing  natural  advantages  of 
this  poor  boy — his  beauty,  his  readiness,  the  daring  spirit  that 
breathed  around  him  like  a  fiery  atmosphere — had  raised  his  con 
stitutional  self-confidence  into  an  arrogance  that  turned  his  very 
claims  to  admiration  into  prejudices  against  him.  Irascible,  envious — 
bad  enough,  but  not  the  worst,  for  these  salient  angles  were  all 
varnished  over  with  a  cold  repellant  synicism,  his  passions  vented 
themselves  in  sneers.  There  seemed  to  him  no  moral  susceptibility; 
and,  what  was  more  remarkable  in  a  proud  nature,  little  or  nothing 
of  the  true  point  of  honor.  He  had,  to  a  morbid  excess,  that  desire  to 
rise  which  is  vulgarly  called  ambition,  but  no  wish  for  the  esteem  of 
the  love  of  his  species ;  only  the  hard  wish  to  succeed — not  shine,  not 
serve — succeed,  that  he  might  have  the  right  to  despise  a  world  which 
galled  his  self-conceit. 


INDEX 


INDEX 

Abnormal  mental  states  result  of  heredity,  3  -,  1 1 , 92 ;  1 1 5 ;  as  exhibited 
by  Poe,  82,83,93,96-102. 

Adams'  family  mentioned,  14. 

Age  of  Poe  when  mental  decline  became  evident,  69;  Poe's  "old  age," 
70;  arterio-sclerosis  a  part  of  old  age,  95 ;  arcus  senilis  evidence  of, 
115. 

Aidenn,  Griswold  denies  to  Poe  the  right  of  entrance,  123 ;  "A  mono 
logue  in,  229-239. 

Al  Aaraaf  a  speciman  of  early  poetry,  25 ;  read  before  a  Boston  audi 
ence,  54. 

Alcoholic  inheritance  essential  feature  in  dipsomania,  4,  5-6;  in  the 
Poe  family,  14;  as  evidenced  in  the  brother  and  sister  of  Poe,  15; 
a  birthright  of  Poe,  17;  alcohol,  effect  on  capacity,  67,  Ml;  Poe's 
use  of,  35,  92;  effect  on  alcoholics,  67;  alcoholics  not  to  be  con 
founded  with  "drunkards,"  46;  Dr.  Janet  quoted,  46-47;  effect 
on  Poe,  45, 98, 99;  loss  of  memory,  7 ;  stimulation  necessary,  67. 

Alienists  referred  to,  3 ,  7,  1 1 , 90;  necessary  preparation  for,  143. 

"Allan,"  the  use  of  in  Edgar  A.  Poe's  given  name  protested,  205. 

John  Allan  becomes  Poe's  guardian,  15;  never  adopted  Poe,  16;  be 
comes  estranged  from  Poe,  17;  resents  Poe's  supervision  because 
of  "entangling  alliances,"  18;  releases  Poe  from  army  by  employ 
ing  a  substitute,  23 ;  assists  Poe  after  leaving  West  Point,  25. 

Frances  Allan  (John  Allan's  first  wife),  warmly  attached  to  Poe,  18. 

Louisa  Allan  (John  Allan's  second  wife)  quoted  as  to  a  substitute  re 
leasing  Poe  from  the  army,  19;  quoted  as  to  Poe's  wanderings  in 
Europe,  23 ;  quarrels  with  Poe,  123. 

The  Allan  family  skeleton  mentioned,  17. 

"American  Men  of  Letters"  series  contained  Woodberry's  Docu 
mentary  Biography,  198. 

Americana  as  collected  by  Duyckinck,  38;  referrd  to,  39. 

"American  Whig  Review"  first  published  The  Raven,  48. 

Amnesia  occasionally  occurs  in  chronic  alcoholism,  7. 

Ancestral  details  of  the  Poe  family  unduly  exploited,  204. 


318  INDEX 

Annabel  Lee,  not  known  when  it  was  written,  55 ;  not  inspired  by  Mrs. 

Shelton,  191;  quoted,  191. 
"Annie,"  Poe's  real  love,  87-88;  Poe's  letter  to,  quoted,  64-65;  To 

Annie  quoted,  88. 

Arcus  senilis  evidence  of  old  age,  115. 

Army  enlistment,  details  of  a  matter  of  doubt,  18;  released  by  sub 
stitute,  19. 
Arnold,  Miss,  married  to  David  Poe,  14;  suggested  relationship  to 

Benedict  Arnold,  20. 

Arterio-sclerosis,  necessarily  develops  with  old  age,  95. 
Athenaeum's  estimate  of  Poe  quoted,  129. 
Authors  of  America  mentioned,  161. 
Baltimore  referred  to  24,  101,  222. 
Dr.  Barine  quoted  by  Lauvriere,  1 54. 

Baudelaire's  defense  of  Poe  discussed  and  partly  quoted,  134-138. 
The  Bells,  slowly  elaborated,  55;  mentioned,  69,  71 ,  161. 
Bend  sinister  highly  prized  as  a  coat-of-arms  ornament,  1 1 . 
Berenice  quoted  by  Lauvriere,  141. 
Bishop  Berkeley,  philosopher,  poet  and  medical  discoverer,  49;  his 

name  honored  because  it  has  been  adopted  by  the  University  of 

California,  49. 

Biographers  discussed,  3 ,  11,  117,  203. 
Biographers  of  Poe,  referred  to,  3;  Baudelaire,  134-138;  Briggs,  128; 

Graham,    176-179,  appendix;  Griswold,  121-127,  sqq,  appendix; 

Hannay,  129,  130,  189,  195,  197;  Harrison,  203;  Ingram,  196-197; 

Lauvriere,    138-158;  Stoddard,    193-194;  Mrs.   Weiss,    192-193; 

Willis,  58,  160,  162;  Mrs.  Whitman,  183-188;  Woodberry,  199-203. 
Sir  Edmund  T.  Bewley,  genealogist,  12. 
Biography  contrasted  with  photography,  115-116;  mentioned,  70,  71 ; 

201,203,209. 

The  Black  Cat,  mentioned,  149. 
"Biographical  Annual:  Consisting  of  Memoirs  of  Eminent  Persons 

Recently  Deceased,"  119. 
Blind  Tom  an  idiot  savant,  69. 
George  Borrow  quoted  as  to  his  dingle  "horrors,"  30. 
Boston,  birth-place  of  Poe,  19;  referred  to,  21 ,  222. 
Brain  congestion  and  degeneration  in  alcoholism  referred  to,  6, 7, 8, 1 1 1 . 


INDEX  319 

Briscoe,  publisher  of  "Broadway  Journal"  displaces  Briggs  and  gives 
Poe  charge  of  the  Journal,  54. 

Briggs  associates  Poe  as  joint  editor  of  "The  Broadway  Journal,"  50; 
his  first  impression  of  Poe,  50;  leaves  the  Journal,  54;  quoted  on 
"Longfellow  War,"  51;  estimate  of  Poe  in  preface  to  an  early 
English  edition  of  Poe's  works,  128;  accepted  as  authority  by 
Lauvriere,  139. 

"The  Broadway  Journal,"  established  by  Briggs,  50;  Poe  becomes 
associate  editor,  50;  "Longfellow  War"  continued  in,  51 ;  becomes 
editor  and  owner,  54;  contains  few  important  Poe  contributions, 
54 ;  suspends  publication,  57. 

Brown's  Conchology  referred  to,  75. 

Sir  Thomas  Browne  quoted  by  Griswold,  125-126;  quotation  referred 
to,  174. 

William  Cullen  Bryant,  judged  by  Poe,  217;  refuses  to  attend  Poe's 
memorial,  222. 

W.  E.  Burton  employs  Poe  as  editor  of  "The  Gentleman's  Maga 
zine,"  40;  disagrees  with  Poe's  critical  attitude,  40;  threatened  by 

Poe  with  suit  because  of  some  slanderous  remark,  41 ;  sells  "The 

Gentleman's"  to  Graham,  43. 

Byron,  referred  to,  117. 
Carlyle  referred  to,  1 17. 
Dr.  Carter  quoted  as  to  Poe's  use  of  opium,  64. 

T.  C.  Clarke,  quoted  as  to  the  effect  of  stimulants  on  Poe,  98;  quoted 
as  to  pictures  used  to  represent  Poe,  206. 

Maria  Clemm,  aunt  of  Poe,  36;  marries  her  daughter,  Virginia,  to 
Poe,  36;  character  described,  209-212;  quoted  as  to  Poe's  mental 
state  when  he  wrote  "Eureka,"  75;  Poe  writes  to  her  during  his 
Richmond  illness,  99;  Poe  expresses  wish  to  die  with  her,  100; 
describes  Poe's  serious  illness,  94;  intimate  relations  with  Poe, 
83;  Dr.  Moran's  letter  to,  as  to  Poe's  death,  quoted,  102-103; 
gives  consent  to  Griswold's  acting  as  Poe's  editor,  158;  quoted  by 
Gill  as  to  the  method  adopted  by  Griswold  for  becoming  editor, 
159;  received  no  royalty  from  Poe's  works,  162;  letter  to  "Annie" 
quoted,  162;  dies  in  poverty,  162;  referred  to,  16,  85,  101,  102, 
107 , 109, 160, 161 ,  191 , 195 ;  the  friend  of  Poe,  209-21 1 ;  quoted  as 
to  her  relations  with  Poe,  212,217;  photograph  of,  with  poem  To 
My  Mother,  prefacing  page,  209. 


320  INDEX 

Virginia  Clemm  marries  Poe,  36;  discussed  by  Mayne  Reed,  214-215; 

by  Amanda  Harris,  215-216;  referred  to,  58,  83. 
Coleridge  referred  to,  32,  45;  in  connection  with  Ancient  Mariner,  48; 

as  a  dreamer  of  Kubla  Khan,  68. 
Cruikshank  referred  to,  73. 

Cryptograms,  Poe's  peculiar  faculty  in  solving,  68. 
"The  Cypress  Wreath :  A  Book  of  Consolation  for  those  Who  Mourn," 

119. 

Darwin  Family,  referred  to,  14. 
"Defense  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe"  by  Dr.  Moran  quoted  from,  104-109; 

written  at  request  of  Mrs.  Shelton,  190. 
Delirium  Tremens  in  alcoholism,  7,  98;  Sartain's  description  of  an 

attack  in  the  life  history  of  Poe,  96-97;  as  exhibited  in  Poe's  last 

illness,  107,  110. 

Dementia  praecox  mentioned,  associated  with  precocity,  69. 
Depressive  attacks,  described  and  quoted,  of  Tolstoi,  27-28;  Tenny 
son's  The  Two  Voices,  29;  John  Stuart  Mill,  29-30;  George  Borrow, 

31 ;  De  Quincey,  31-32;  Shelley,  29. 
De  Quincey  referred  to,  27 ;  quoted  as  to  his  periodical  depression, 

31-32;  Mater  Tenebrarum  quoted,  32-33;  use  of  opium,  65-66. 
Didier  criticised  by  Ingram,  196. 
Dipsomania  the  result  of  an  alcoholic  inheritance,  4;  5 ;  description  of, 

5-9;  a  form  of  "periodic  insanity,"  7;  definitely  established  as  a 

part  of  Poe's  life-history,  14,  24-25;  organic  brain  changes  in,  47; 

not  to  be  classed  as  insanity,  154-155;  Lauvriere's  discussion  of, 

152-156. 

Dipsomaniac  compulsion,  5-6,  14,  155. 
Dipsomaniac  depression,  6,  63,  93. 
The  Domain  of  Arnheim  written  during  Poe's  mental  decline,  94; 

referred  to,  149. 

Double  personality  referred  to,  59. 
Dreams  and  their  significance,  68. 
Drunkard  as  distinguished  from  an  alcoholic,  46-47;  term,  applied  to 

Poe,  a  misnomer,  4 1 ,  42 ;  threatens  Burton  with  a  defamation  suit 

for  so  calling  him,  41. 
Evert  A.  Duyckinck.    Poe's  letter  to  regarding  the  serious  nature  of 

his  illness,  55 ;  "Encyclopedia  of  American  Literature"  mentioned, 

38,  163. 


INDEX  321 

Edgar  A.  Poe,  use  of  full  name,  "Allan,"  discussed,  204. 

"Edgar  Poe  and  His  Critics/'  book  written  in  defense  of  Poe  by  Mrs. 

Whitman,  quoted,  183-188. 

"Edinburgh  Review"  quoted  on  the  life  of  Poe,  130-133. 
George  W.  Eleveth  quoted  in  correspondence,  as  to  Poe's  habits,  46; 

as  to  Poe's  mental  state,  82. 
Ellis-Allan  papers  referred  to,  16-18. 
Thomas  Dunn  English,  quoted  as  to  Poe's  use  of  intoxicants,  45 ;  as  to 

use  of  opium,  64 ;  Sartain  relates  conversation  between  Griswold 

and  English,  189;  sued  by  Poe  for  defamation  of  character,  61 , 85. 
English  estimates  of  Poe  quoted,  Athenaeum,   129;  Eraser's,   130; 

Edinburgh  Review,  130-133;  referred  to,  Hannays  129;  Ingram, 

195-197. 

Environment  mentioned,  3;  as  it  relates  to  Poe,  unfortunate,  16. 
Epilepsy  discussed  as  it  relates  to  Poe's  alleged  condition,  61-63. 
Eugenic  laws  discussed,  144-145. 

"Eureka"  discussed  as  evidence  of  Poe's  paranoid  state,  71-81. 
Expansive  mental  states,  93 ,  94. 
Fordham  cottage  described,  57-58. 
French  estimate  of  Poe,  134. 

French  psychology  as  explained  by  Lauvriere,  156-157. 
Froude  referred  to  as  biographer,  1 17. 
Functional  neuroses  discussed,  5,  113. 
Genealogy  mentioned,  1 1 ;  as  it  relates  to  Poe,  12-13,  204. 
Genius,  defined,  10;  discussed,  91,  97. 
George  Eliot  referred  to,  27. 
"Germanic  Horrors"  as  explained  by  Poe,  207. 
Lloyd  George  mentioned,  144. 

"The  Gentleman's  Magazine,"  edited  by  Poe,  40;  consolidated  with 
"Casket,"  43. 
W.  F.  Gill,  quoted  as  to  Griswold's  acquirement  of  the  Poe  MMS., 

159;  writes  "The  Life  of  Poe,"  195. 
Goethe  and  his  "Theory  of  Colors,"  73. 
Golden  age  of  Poe's  literary  achievements,  24. 
Goldsmith  mentioned,  144,  209,  222. 
Gowans,  the  book  collector,  quoted  as  to  Poe,  214. 


322  INDEX 

George  Q.  Graham  employs  Poe  as  editor  of  "The  Gentleman's 
Magazine,"  43;  substitutes  Griswold,  44;  defends  the  memory  of 
Poe,  176-179;  quoted  as  to  Poe,  213-214;  defense  quoted  in 
appendix,. 

Gray's  Elegy  referred  to,  48. 

Horace  Greeley's  relations  with  Poe  discussed,  173-174. 

Rufus  Wilmot  Griswold  writes  a  memoir  of  Poe  containing  defama 
tory  statements,  1 ,  2,  9,  26;  accused  by  Briggs  of  telling  "damn 
able  lies"  about  Poe,  50;  judgment  given  against  him  when  Poe 
sued  him  for  defamatory  statements,  60-61;  misrepresents  the 
facts  of  the  Whitman-Poe  engagement,  86;  discussed,  183 ;  assumes 
the  right  to  "anatomize"  Poe  as  a  public  warning,  116;  psycholo 
gized,  117-118;  was  never  requested  to  write  a  memoir  of  Poe,  118; 
a  man  peculiarly  experienced  in  obituary  literature,  119;  shows 
sympathetic  interest  in  Mrs.  Clemm  after  Poe's  death,  120;  writes 
an  obituary  of  Poe  for  the  "New  York  Tribune"  that  was  signed 
"Ludwig,"  filled  with  malicious  statements  and  evidencing  bitter 
hatred,  120;  "Ludwig"  article  discussed  and  quoted,  121-123; 
states  that  when  he  wrote  the  "Ludwig"  article  he  did  not  know 
that  he  had  been  "appointed"  Poe's  editor,  120;  as  editor  prefixes 
a  "Memoir"  to  Poe's  collected  Works,  124;  "Memoir"  discussed 
and  quoted,  124-127;  (also  published  in  full  in  the  appendix,,) 
bitterly  criticised  by  Willis  and  Graham,  129;  Griswold's  "Me 
moir"  accepted  by  European  critics,  129,  130,  133.  134,  157;  de 
fines  and  specifies  his  editorial  duties,  121;  his  statements  as  to 
Kennedy's  out-fitting  Poe  denied,  123;  seeks  Mrs.  Clemm,  and 
proffers  his  services  as  editor  of  Poe's  Collected  Works,  158; 
demands  of  Mrs.  Clemm  "a//"  of  Poe's  papers  and  manuscripts, 
162 ;  bases  his  claim  to  the  appointment  of  editor  of  Poe's  papers  to 
a  request  made  by  Poe  through  "the  family  of  S.  D.  Lewis,"  169; 
174;  in  a  statement  prefixed  to  the  "Memoir"  he  denies  enmity 
to  Poe,  170;  privately,  in  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Whitman,  quoted,  as 
serts  his  enmity,  170;  enmity  resulted  from  Poe's  lecture  on  "The 
Poets  and  Poetry  of  America,"  also  from  a  review  of  this  book  in 
the  Philadelphia  "Saturday  Museum,"  171;  (Museum  article 
quoted  entire  in  appendix.);  determination  to  edit  Poe's  works 
based  on  desire  to  eliminate  these  and  other  reviews,  171 ;  said  to 
have  been  both  untruthful  and  dishonest,  173;  ordered  to  write 
the  "Ludwig"  article  by  Greeley,  173;  the  result  of  collaboration 
with  Greeley,  174;  states  that  he  neglected  his  work  to  undertake 


INDEX  323 

this  editorship,  171;  Gill's  explanation  of  this  assumption  of 
editorship,  165;  induces  Redfield  to  undertake  the  publication, 
161 ;  promised  Mrs.  Clemm  a  royalty  which  was  never  received, 
162;  my  individual  opinion  as  to  Griswold's  reasons  for  under 
taking  the  editorship  of  Poe's  papers,  164-165;  Woodberry  re 
gards  this  selection  as  a  full  recognition  of  Griswold's  capacity  as 
a  literary  editor,  165;  "Memoir"  attacked  by  Graham,  and 
Graham's  defense  of  Poe,  discussed  and  quoted,  176-180;  (repub- 
lished  in  full  in  appendix) ;  described  by  Poe  as  "the  unfaithful 
servant  who  betrayed  his  trust"  169;  quoted  as  to  Mrs.  Clemm,  21 1 1 
as  to  Poe,  217. 

Hallucinations  described  by  Sartain  from  which  Poe  suffered  during 
an  attack  of  delirium  tremens,  96-97;  mentioned,  99. 

Hannay,  the  English  Poe  memorialist,  is  attacked  by  Eraser's  Maga 
zine,  130;  mentioned,  189,  195,  197. 

Amanda  B.  Harris  quoted  as  to  the  life  led  by  the  Poes,  215-216. 

James  A.  Harrison  suggests  an  alienistic  study  of  Poe,  1 1 ;  asserts  that 
Allan  adopted  Poe,  16;  quoted  as  to  Allan's  early  alcoholic  train 
ing  of  Poe,  16-17;  quoted  as  to  Richmond,  16;  his  estimate  of 
Eureka,  71 ;  his  biography  of  Poe  discussed,  203-204. 

"Harry  Franco,"  nom  de  plume  of  Briggs,  128. 

The  Haunted  House,  132. 

Heart  disease,  functional  disturbance  as  it  affected  Poe,  42;  diagnosed 
by  Dr.  Francis,  59. 

Hereditary  compulsions,  111,  113. 

Heredity  discussed,  3,5;  mentioned,  7,9,  11;  riddle  of  heredity  dis 
cussed,  144-145;  Poe's  heredity  mentioned,  3,9, 17,27,  115,204. 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes'  "Race  of  Life"  quoted,  220-221;  refuses  an 
invitation  to  attend  the  unveiling  of  the  Poe  monument,  222. 

Home's  "Orion"  quoted,  53-54. 

Idiot  Savant,  a  mental  state  closely  allied  to  insanity,  69. 

Illustrations,  character  of,  chosen  by  Poe  publishers,  205-206. 

J.  H.  Ingram  makes  a  special  study  of  Poe,  196;  writes  "Edgar  Allan 
Poe:  His  Life,  Letters  and  Opinions,"  196;  discussed,  196-197; 
reflects  on  Poe's  parentage,  204. 

Inheritance  of  nervous  temperament,  3-5, 6, 9, 10, 14, 17,  27.  44. 

"Insanity  of  Genius"  discussed,  90-92;  Lauvriere's  Classification, 
155-156. 


324  INDEX 

Interview  between  English  and  Griswold  quoted  from  Sartain,  189-190. 

Dr.  Janet  quoted  as  to  the  distinctioa  between  alcoholism  and  drunk 
enness,  46-47;  mentioned  by  Lauvriere,  142. 

Jekyll  and  Hyde  characteristics  as  exhibited  in  the  life  of  Poe,  1 1 5. 

Kavanagh  mentioned,  71. 

"Know  Thyself,"  a  dictum  impossible  to  fulfill,  90. 

Keats  mentioned,  145. 

J.  H.  Kennedy  befriends  Poe,  25;  letter  from  Poe  to,  quoted,  27; 
gives  reason  for  Poe's  resigning  from  the  "Southern  Literary 
Messenger,"  37. 

"Ladies  Repository"  approvingly  quotes  the  Edinburgh  Review  article 
on  Poe,  133. 

Lamb's  use  of  stimulants  in  periods  of  depression,  32;  referred  to,  48. 

Landors  Cottage  mentioned,  94. 

La  Place's  theory  of  cosmogony  not  understood  by  Poe,  82;  Poe 
quoted  as  to  comparative  merit  of  his  theory  with  that  of  La 
Place,  82. 

John  H.  Latrobe  quoted  as  to  the  Poe  award  by  the  Visiter,  122-123 ; 
denies  the  story  published  by  Griswold,  123. 

Emil  Lauvriere's  interpretation  of  Eureka,  79;  his  psychological  dis 
cussion  of  Poe,  1 38-1 58 ;  quoted  as  to  Poe's  features,  205. 

Law  of  Destiny,  113. 

S.  D.  Lewis  quoted  as  to  Poe's  habits,  216-217;  mentioned  as  Gris- 
wold's  authority  for  assuming  editorship  of  Poe's  works,  169. 

Sarah  Anne  (by  request,  Stella)  Lewis,  relations  with  Poe  discussed, 
175-176;  her  letter  to  Griswold  quoted,  176;  quoted,  95. 

"S.  D.  Lewis  Family"  mentioned  by  Griswold  as  communicating  to 
him  Poe's  request  that  he  act  as  Poe  editor,  1 58. 

Literary  morals  of  the  40's  mentioned,  172-173. 

"The  Literati"  authors  discussed,  38;  Memoir,  contained  in  preface, 
mentioned,  1 ,  124. 

Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow's  opinion  of  Poe,  52;  letter  to,  quoted, 
51-52;  referred  to,  73 ;  Poe's  opinion  of,  51 ;  167;  refused  to  attend 
the  Poe  monument  dedication,  223. 

"The  Longfellow  War"  begun  in  the  "Mirror,"  50-51;  continued  in 
"Broadway  Journal,"  51 ;  evidence  of  Poe's  abnormal  mental  con 
dition,  50;  referred  to  by  Edinburgh  Review,  132. 

James  Russell  Lowell  quoted  as  to  Poe's  appearance,  56;  impression 


INDEX  325 

made  on  Poe  by  Lowell,  56;  correspondence  referred  to,  55;  Mrs. 

Clemm's  letter  to,  56;  life  contrasted  with  that  of  Poe,  219-220; 

refuses  to  attend  the  unveiling  of  the  Poe  monument,  222. 
Macabre  dancing  figure  of  Lauvriere,  149. 
Macaulay  a  marked  example  of  precocity,  69. 
James  McBride,  "Admiral  of  the  Blue,"  referred  to  as  a  relative  of 

Poe,  12;  mentioned,  122,  204. 

John  Mackenzie  visits  Mrs.  Poe  during  her  last  illness,  15. 
Dr.  Magnan  quoted  by  Lauvriere,  153;  mentioned,  151. 
General  Magruder  quoted  as  to  Poe's  West  Point  life,  20. 
Maniacal  outbreaks  as  the  result  of  alcohol,  7,  100. 
Cotton  Mather,  118. 
Marginalia  mentioned,  1 ,  93. 
Mater  Tenebrarum  quoted,  32. 
Megrim  badge  of  intellectual  superiority,  4. 
Memoir  of  Poe  by  Griswold  discussed  and  quoted,  124-129;  for  many 

years  the  Poe  estimate,  127;  mentioned,  2,  133;  reprinted  in  full 

in  appendix,. 

Memory,  loss  of,  in  alcoholics,  7 ,  8. 
Mendel's  law  of  inheritance  mentioned,  144. 
Meninges  defined,  7. 
Mental  compulsions,  26,  33. 

Mental  degeneration  the  result  of  undue  use  of  alcohol,  6;  8;  as  ex 
hibited  by  Poe,  57. 

John  Stuart  Mill's  description  of  attack  of  depression  quoted,  29-30. 

Miss  Mitford,  De  Quincy's  letter  to,  regarding  his  abnormal  mental 
state  quoted,  32. 

Lucian  Minor  at  one  time  editor  of  the  "Southern  Literary  Messen 
ger,"  36;  White's  letters  to,  concerning  Poe's  attacks  of  depression, 
quoted,  37. 

"The  Mirror,"  Poe  employed  on,  47,  48;  contains  The  Raven,  48; 
Poe  begins  "The  Longfellow  War"  in,  50;  letter  from  Willis 
quoted  as  to  Poe's  work  in,  58. 

A  Monologue  of  the  Dead,  229-239. 

Monument  erected  over  grave  of  Poe  in  Baltimore,  222. 

Moral  degeneration  in  alcoholism,  6,  8;  in  dipsomania,  9. 


326  INDEX 

Dr.  Moran's  "Defense  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe"  discussed  and  quoted, 
102-110,  190. 

Moral  perversions  not  insanity,  92. 

Moral  serum  supplied  by  nature  as  a  preventive  of  self-knowledge,  90. 

Moyamensing  prison,  Poe's  delusions  regarding  his  confinement 
there,  97,  100. 

Murders  of  the  Rue  Morgue  mentioned,  149. 

Narcotics,  use  of,  32;  35;  mentioned,  8. 

Nature  a  queer  old  mother,  43;  eugenic  laws  of,  144;  method  of  com 
pensation,  111. 

John  Neal,  editor  of  the  Yankee,  corresponds  with  Poe,  22;  repro 
duces  extracts  from  Poe's  poems,  22;  criticises  Griswold's  attack 
on  Poe  in  the  Memoir,  125.  * 

Nervous  diathesis  discussed,  4-5,  144. 

Neuroses  inherited,  6;  transmitted,  1 13 ;  as  it  relates  to  Poe,  4,  115. 

"New  York  Tribune"  publishes  the  "Ludwig"  obituary  of  Poe,  120, 121. 

Nil  letigit  quod  non  ornovit,  applied  by  Poe  to  Longfellow,  218. 

"Oliver  Twist"  claimed  by  Cruikshank,  71. 

Opium,  use  of  by  Poe,  63,  67;  Dr.  English  quoted,  64;  Dr.  Carter 
quoted,  64;  Poe's  letter  to  Annie  quoted,  64-65;  use  of  by  dip 
somaniacs,  63;  establishment  of  opium  habit,  67;  dipsomaniacs 
rarely  become  opium  addicts ; not  used  to  produce  hallucinations  or 
illusions,  68;  De  Quincey's  use  of  opium,  65-66;  De  Quincey's 
"Opium  Eater"  statements  questioned,  66;  Symons'  "The  Opium 
Smoker,"  quoted,  68;  Poe  not  an  addict,  67. 

"Orion"  asserted  by  Poe  to  be  the  equal  of  "Paradise  Lost,"  52; 
quoted,  53-54. 

Old  age,  95;  as  it  affected  Dr.  Moran,  95;  as  it  affected  Poe  memori 
alists,  189. 

Mrs.  Frances  Osgood  sought  by  Poe,  83 ;  the  impression  made  on  her 
by  Poe  quoted,  84 ;  her  attempt  to  avoid  Poe's  attentions  quoted, 
84;  she  approvingly  quotes  the  doggerel  of  Stoddard,  84;  rnr 
description  of  Poe,  84. 

"The  Oquawka  Magazine,"  a  journal  Poe  attempted  to  establish, 
93,94,101. 

"Our  Press  Gang,"  Wilmer's  collection  of  newspaper  anecdotes,  con 
tained  defense  of  Poe,  180;  quoted,  181-182. 

"Outis"  answers  Poe's  criticism  of  Longfellow's  plagiarisms,  51. 


INDEX  327 

Overstudy  not  a  cause  of  insanity,  91. 

Paranoid  tendencies  not  unusual  in  men  of  genius,  73-74;  basis  of 
Poe's  conception  of  cosmos,  7 1 ,  sqq 

Periodic  insanity  discussed  by  Spitzka,  7-8. 

The  "Perry  Record"  discussed,  19;  referred  to,  23,  26. 

Periodical  depression,  26,  27;  referred  to,  25. 

Mrs.  Phelps  quoted  as  to  the  marriage  of  Poe  to  Virginia  Clemm,  83. 

Photography  contrasted  with  biography,  1 15;  116. 

Pictures  of  Poe  protested,  205-206. 

Platonic  love  exhibited  by  Poe  for  several  women,  83 , 85-86. 

John  Poe  (Edgar  Poe's  great-grandfather)  emigrates  to  America, 
12,  13. 

David  Poe  (grandfather  of  Edgar  Poe)  discussed,  13,  14. 

David  Poe  (father  of  Edgar  Poe)  marries  Miss  Arnold,  14;  end  un 
certain,  16;  death  probably  due  to  alcoholic  syndrome,  14;  begets 
three  children,  all  marked  by  neurotic  heredity,  15. 

Mrs.  David  Poe  (Edgar  Poe's  mother)  an  actress,  Miss  Arnold,  14; 
is  the  mother  of  three  children,  15;  dies  in  destitution,  15-16. 

Edgar  A.  Poe,  personal  relations  with  authors,  1 ;  the  various  esti 
mates  of  Poe's  character,  2;  his  work  not  the  result  of  drugs  or 
alcoholic  poisoning,  2,  135-138,  140,  149;  capacity  for  describ 
ing  the  abnormal  and  horrible,  2,  204;  alienist's  knowledge  neces 
sary  for  making  an  understandable  explanation  of  the  controversial 
facts  of  Poe's  life,  3,11;  the  disease  from  which  Poe  suffered  can 
be  classified  as  dipsomania,  4 ;  his  morbid  heredity  responsible  for 
his  abnormal  nervous  state,  9;  his  ancestry  discussed,  12-13; 
mother  dies  while  he  was  still  an  infant,  15;  cared  for  by  John 
Allan,  16;  evidence  of  precocity  17;  his  hereditary  evil  becomes 
evident,  17;  is  taken  from  the  University  of  Virginia  and  made  to 
work,  18;  runs  away  and  sails  for  Europe  18;  enters  the  army  and 
later  appointed  to  West  Point,  19;  life  at  West  Point  described, 
20;  his  correspondence  with  Neal,  editor  of  the  "Yankee,"  22; 
the  facts  of  Poe's  life  both  before,  and  after  leaving  West  Point 
a  matter  that  has  become  controversial,  23-24;  Poe's  precocity 
evidenced  by  the  full  development  of  his  literary  capacity,  25; 
submits  his  "Tales  of  the  Folio  Club"  to  Kennedy  and  secures 
the  prize  offered  by  the  "Baltimore  Visiter,"  25  ;suffers  from  mental 
depression  described  in  his  letter  to  Kennedy,  27;  becomes  asso 
ciated  with  "Southern  Literary  Messenger"  in  1835,  35;  marries 


328  INDEX 

his  cousin,  Virginia  Clemm,  36;  resigns  his  position  on  "Mes 
senger,"  38;  becomes  associated  with  Burton  in  conducting  "The 
Gentleman's  Magazine,"  40;  resigns  because  of  difficulties  with 
Burton,  and  threatens  a  suit  for  defamation  of  character  because 
Burton  called  him  a  drunkard,  41;  functional  heart  disturbance 
causes  undue  anxiety,  42;  becomes  associated  with  Graham's  in 
the  conduct  of  "Graham's  Magazine,"  43 ;  applies  for  government 
position  in  Washington,  44;  oversensitiveness  to  stimulants  dis 
cussed,  45-47;  employed  on  the  "Mirror,"  47-48;  publishes  The 
Raven,  48;  becomes  associate  editor  with  Briggs  on  "The  Broad 
way  Journal,"  50;  "The  Longfellow  War"  begun  in  the  "Mirror," 
50;  corresponds  with  Longfellow,  51-52;  his  curious  critical  esti 
mate  of  Home's  "Orion,"  53;  composition  difficult  to  perform  on 
command,  55;  letter  to  Duycinck  regarding  his  mental  condition 
quoted,  55;  Poe's  features  described,  56-57;  "The  Broadway 
Journal"  is  discontinued,  57;  sick  and  destitute,  57-58;  not  an 
epileptic,  61-63 ;  not  an  opium  addict,  63-67 ;  an  attack  of  depression 
described  in  his  letter  to  "Annie,"  64-65 ;  deciphering  cryptograms 
a  mental  gift,  68-69;  Poe's  "old  age"  and  mental  deterioration, 
70-71 ;  paranoid  condition  underlying  his  conception  of  "Eureka," 
71;  his  explanation  of  the  cosmos  theory,  79-82;  platonic  love 
exhibited  for  various  women,  83-87;  "Annie"  his  one  love, 
87-89;  hereditary  evil  intensified  by  degenerative  changes  in 
the  brain,  92,  95;  his  diagnosis  of  his  own  condition,  92-93; 
abandons  his  Fordham  home,  95;  Mrs.  Lewis  reports  a  request 
she  states  that  he  made  asking  her  to  write  his  life,  95;  he  reg 
isters  a  promise  to  Mrs.  Clemm  as  to  his  future  sobriety,  96; 
appears  in  the  office  of  John  Sartain  suffering  from  an  attack  of 
delirium  tremens,  96;  sqq. ;  expresses  a  desire  to  die  with  Mrs. 
Clemm,  100;  indulges  in  alcoholic  excesses  during  his  last  visit  to 
Richmond,  101 ;  suffers  from  an  attack  of  delirium  and  is  taken 
to  Washington  University  Hospital,  101;  Dr.  Moran's  letter  to 
Mrs.  Clemm  describing  his  death,  102-103;  Dr.  Moran's  later 
"Defense  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe"  discussed,  104-109;  Poe's  alcoholic 
seizures  the  result  of  hereditary  compulsion,  113;  Poe's  alleged 
request  that  Griswold  edit  his  works  questioned,  118;  his  criti 
cisms  of  Griswold's  "Poets  and  Poetry  of  America"  caused  bitter 
hatred,  166-169;  his  final  and  scathing  denunciation  of  Griswold 
as  "the  unfaithful  servant  who  betrayed  his  trust,"  169;  Poe  accuses 
Greeley  of  unjust  criticisms,  173;  literary  eminence  questioned 
both  in  England  and  America,  133;  obituary  published  in  the 


INDEX  329 

"Tribune'*  the  day  following  Poe's  death,  120;  sqq.',  the  Memoir 
prefixed  to  Poe's  collected  works,  124-129  (also  published  in  full 
in  appendix) ;  Poe's  life  given  both  by  Lowell  and  Willis  in  the 
first  volume  of  the  collected  works,  160;  discussed  in  English 
Periodicals,  129,  sqq. ;  discussed  by  Baudelaire,  134-138;  discussed 
by  Lauvriere,  138-158;  defended  by  Wilmer,  180  sqq.;  182 
sqq. ;  discussion  of  his  courtship  of  Mrs.  Shelton,  190;  discussed 
by  Mrs.  Weiss,  192;  Stoddard  describes  a  visit  to,  193-194;  In- 
gram's  biography  of,  196-197,  Woodberry's  Documentary  Study 
and  Life  of,  198-202;  Poe's  declaration  of  his  beliefs,  218;  seeks 
the  friendship  of  Lowell,  217;  Poe's  and  Lowell's  lives  contrasted, 
219-220;  pictures  of  Poe  discussed,  205;  his  relation  with  Mrs. 
Clemm,  209-211. 

Virginia  Poe  (Edgar's  Poe's  wife),  58,  83,  212,  214,  216. 

William  Poe  (Edgar  Poe's  brother),  15. 

Rosalie  Poe  (Edgar  Poe's  sister),  15. 

Neilson  Poe  (Edgar  Poe's  cousin)  warns  him  against  "the  bottle" 
heredity,  14;  quoted  as  to  the  small  amount  of  stimulant  it  took 
to  affect  Poe,  160. 

"Poet  Laureate"  a  role  unsuited  to  Poe,  55. 

* 'Poets  and  Poetry  of  America,"  reviewed  by  Poe,  165  sqq.'y  (the 
"Museum"  review  republished  in  the  appendix). 

Pope  mentioned,  69. 

Precocity  discussed,  5,9,  17. 

Quacks  of  Helicon  Review  by  Poe  quoted,  163-164;  referred  to,  1. 

"Queen  Mab"  referred  to,  25. 

The  Raven  published,  48;  its  method  of  composition,  70-71. 

Redfield  undertakes  the  publication  of  Poe's  collected  works,  162; 
pays  no  royalty  to  Mrs.  Cternm,  162;  circulates  over  twenty  thou 
sand  copies,  162;  final  publication  in  1876,  188. 

Mayne  Reid  quoted  with  relation  to  the  Poes,  214-215. 

Richmond,  the  early  home  of  Poe,  described  by  Harrison,  16;  home  of 
John  Allan,  18;  alleged  birthplace  of  Poe,  20;  Poe's  residence 
after  leaving  West  Point,  24;  contains  the  "Edgar  A.  Poe  Shrine" 
recently  dedicated,  194. 

John  Sartain's  reminiscences  of  Poe,  96;  quoted  as  to  interview  be 
tween  English  and  Griswold,  189-190;  quoted  as  to  Poe's  features, 
206. 


330  INDEX 

General  Scott  assists  Poe  to  enter  West  Point,  20. 

Shelley  gave  evidence  of  precocity,  2  5 ;  abnormal  mental  state  quoted,  29 . 

Mrs.  Shelton  renews  acquaintance  with  Poe,  86;  accepts  his  suit,  190; 

discussed,  190-192. 
Mrs.  Shew  assists  Poe  during  a  serious  illness,  85-86;  prognoses  Poe's 

early  death  because  of  heart  disease,  42 ;  acts  as  Poe's  nurse,  59-60. 
Slope:  A  Fable,  quoted,  33. 
Dr.  Snodgrass,  Poe's  letter  to,  regarding  his  alcoholic  life  in  Richmond 

quoted,  37;  letter  quoted  in  which  Poe  threatens  Burton  with  a 

law  suit,  41. 
"Southern  Literary  Messenger,"  Poe  becomes  acting  editor  of,  35; 

no  reason  assigned  for  resignation,  37-38;  valedictory  quoted,  39. 
"Stylus,"  44. 

Spitzka's  description  and  definition  of  dipsomania  quoted,  7-8. 
R.  H.  Stoddard,  quoted  by  Mrs.  Osgood,  84;  discussed  and  quoted, 

193-194. 

Swinburne  mentioned,  32;  poems  not  the  result  of  alcoholic  stimula 
tion,  111. 
Suicide,  in  neurasthenic  depressive  state,  obsessed  Poe,  27;  letter  to 

Kennedy  quoted,  27;  letter  to  "Annie"   quoted,  64-65;  as  it 

affected  other  men  of  genius,  27-32;  mentioned  by  White,  37. 
Tales  of  "The  Folio  Club,"  25. 
"Tamerlane"  printed  in  Boston,  18;  mentioned,  25. 
Tennyson,  "Two  Voices"  quoted,  29;  "The  Vision  of  Sin"  quoted, 

112-113;  mentioned,  71,  132;  admired  by  Poe,  168;  his  response 

to  the  invitation  of  the  "Monument"  committee,  223. 
Thackeray  accuses  Griswold  of  deliberate  lying,  172;  mentioned,  209; 

quoted  as  to  Steele,  224. 
F.  W.  Thomas,  quoted  as  to  the  effect  of  alcohol  on  Poe,  44;  attempts 

to  secure  for  Poe  a  political  position,  45. 
"The  Unfaithful  Servant  Who  Betrayed  His  Trust"  169;  referred  to, 

117,171,239. 

Tolstoi  quoted  as  to  his  depressive  seizures,  27-28. 
Trelawney,  the  unsympathetic  biographer  of  Byron,  mentioned,  1 17. 
Ulalume  mentioned,  55;  formulated  in  an  abnormal  brain,  70,  71. 
University  of  Virginia,  Poe's  attendance  at,  26. 
Valedictory  in  "Southern  Literary  Messenger,"  38;  in  "Broadway 

Journal,"  57. 


^       r-  —    / 

INDEX 


Valentine  Museum  in  Richmond,  23. 

''Vision  of  Sin"  quoted,  112-113. 

"Waif"  criticised  by  Poe,  50. 

Mrs.  Weiss  quoted  as  to  Poe's  marriage,  83  ;  quoted  as  to  Poe's  sick 

ness,  101  ;  quoted  as  to  Poe's  courtship  of  Mrs.  Shelton,  192;  value 

of  her  *'  Reminiscences"  discussed,  192-193. 
West  Point,  Poe's  admission  to,  19;  life  at,  19-21. 
T.  W.  White,  editor  of  "Southern  Literary  Messenger"  referred  to, 

35,  38. 
Mrs.  Whitman's  interpretation  of  "Eureka"  quoted,  76;  is  engaged  to 

Poe,  86;  facts  of  engagement  misrepresented  by  Griswold,  86; 
183;  writes  a  defense  of  Poe,  182;  her  discussion  of  Poe  quoted, 

183-188. 
J.  H.  Whitty  referred  to,  193;  quoted  as  to  Stoddard  and  Griswold, 

194. 
William  Wilson,  psychology  of  not  understood  by  Lauvriere,   147; 

quoted,  149. 
N.  P.  Willis  gives  Poe  a  position  on  "Mirror,"  47;  intimate  with  Poe, 

48  ;  description  of  Poe,  56;  quoted  as  to  Poe's  use  of  alcohol,  58-59  ; 

quoted  as  to  Mrs.   Clemm,   210;   quoted  regarding  Poe,   213; 

Memoir,  212. 
Wilmer's  "Quacks  of  Helicon"  favorably  reviewed  by  Poe,    163; 

quoted,  163-164;  defends  Poe  in  "The  Press  Gang,"  180-182. 
George  E.  Woodberry  discovers  the  Perry  Record,  18;  furnishes  new 

evidence  regarding  Poe's  early  manhood,  26;  quoted  as  authority 

for  a  statement  of  Mrs.  Clemm,  75;  discusses  "Eureka,"  77;  78; 

discusses  Poe's  condition  during  his  last  illness,  99;  "Life  of  Poe" 

referred  to,    139;  quoted  as  to  Griswold's  editorship  of  Poe's 

Works,  159;  quoted  as  to  Griswold's  arrangement  with  Redfield 

for  publication  of  Poe's  Works,  161  ;  quoted  regarding  Poe's  selec 

tion  of  Griswold,  165;  quoted  as  to  a  Fordham  excursion,  172; 

quoted  with  reference  to  Leland's  statement  regarding  Griswold, 

172;  quoted  as  to  the  Griswold-Greeley  obituary  of  Poe,   173; 

authority  for  the  letter  that  Mrs.  Lewis  wrote  Griswold,   176; 

quotes   Mrs.    Weiss,    193;    Woodberry  's    "Documentary"    and 

"Literary"  Life  of  Poe  discussed,  197-203;  quotes  Willis  as  to 

Poe,  213  ;  quoted  as  to  Poe's  letters  published  by  Griswold,  170. 
"The  Yankee,"  published  by  Neal,  contains  the  first  authentic  Poe 

contributions,  22. 


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